If you want to be broken down, why did you build it up?
Sadly, not even a possible task: https://waldo.jaquith.org/blog/2011/12/impractical-cheeseburger/
As may all thoughts be.
So much thinking about thoughts.
I think the “removed” here means “found at a distance from”, rather than “something taken away”.
I do hope that’s a keyless key.
I’d like to get a better sense of what you actually “do” when considering a new position to take. Can you walk me through an /NQ example? I’m familiar with the Greeks, but don’t use them quite as actively, so would appreciate if you could spell it all out. Thanks and best of luck in 2020!
Just be cautious who you take as master.
r/zen is more than the beliefs of a few outspoken members.
Such a poor man’s affirmation doesn’t get you off the hook. :)
Somewhere, a Greek person is wondering about our fascination with this letter.
In what way does it perplex you?
So it is said that all the Tathāgata taught was just to convert people; it was like pretending yellow leaves are real gold just to stop the flow of a child’s tears; it must by no means be regarded as though it were ultimate truth. If you take it for truth, you are no member of our sect; and what bearing can it have on your original substance? — Huangbo
It’s telling that most of the people who readily blurt out “not Zen” will never give you an honest accounting of what Zen is.
Those who seek the truth by means of intellect and learning only get further and further away from it. Not till your thoughts cease all their branching here and there, not till you abandon all thoughts of seeking for something, not till your mind is motionless as wood or stone, will you be on the right road to the Gate. — Huangbo
The root of all suffering is using this many words and concepts to talk about the root of all suffering.
Although Zen history is full of stories of enlightenment experiences, the real deal is found in the unremarkable and the ordinary, lived without artifice.
You friendly fountain of questions! where is your source?
“Ordinary mind is the Way.” If I try to clarify further, I’ll just muddy the waters hopelessly.
Ironic that you should ask. ;) Where did your question arise from?
Nihilism is defined as “extreme skepticism maintaining that nothing in the world has a real existence.” I think Zen appears to coincide when we talk about the role of mental conceptions, but nihilism would stop short of statements like this from Huangpo:
That which is called the Place of Precious Things is the real Mind, the original Buddha-Essence, the treasure of our own real Nature. These jewels cannot be measured or accumulated. Yet since there are neither Buddha nor sentient beings, neither subject nor object, where can there be a City of Precious Things? If you ask, ‘Well, so much for the City of Illusion, but where is the Place of Precious Things?’, it is a place to which no directions can be given. For, if it could be pointed out, it would be a place existing in space; hence, it could not be the real Place of Precious Things. All we can say is that it is close by. It cannot be exactly described, but when you have a tacit understanding of its substance, it is there.
To a nihilist, I don’t see them agreeing with anything being “there” at all, concerning both Cities.
It’s nice to have you here. I have no questions today, but you’ve taught me that there is a plant variety called “green sage” that I’d seen before, but never knew was a sage. So maybe I wouldn’t recognize Huangbo, if sages can hide in plain sight!
I guess no fans of Ultima V...
Ordinary mind also knows how to plant rice and harvest it, or build a house. But people know not to identify themselves with a hammer and nails.
MU MU MU
You have attained virtue!
I really have no experience with Guix. I use Nix at work and for all personal projects.
It didn’t make sense as I read it, but somehow after finishing I feel like I agree with you. Does that makes sense? :) If I were to summarize, it sounds like you’re saying it only takes one drop of poison to spoil a gallon of milk.
It’s a day when I can engage random strangers in wishing them a merry day, and they don’t wonder why I’m speaking to them.
Your picture of it doesn’t quite match observation. When 9,999 of 10,000 (or worse) all choose a particular path, it’s natural to regard that as a path of least resistance. If it were “merely a choice” as you suggest, I’d expect to see more variation among the people that I meet.
I wonder why delusion is so successful at being the chosen life strategy for human beings, while the clear path is so rare. Does this imply that delusion is a more natural state?
You’ve come to a place that is prone to argue only one side of this question, so I’ll play the paradoxical devil’s advocate:
Belief answers a question, but faith is demonstrated by living it: through interaction with the world and your community. Going to church isn’t only a restatement, any more than you’d stop seeing a girlfriend just because you’ve already said you love her.
Lots of people here meditate and spend years of their life studying koans because they heard about enlightenment or the Void or the Unborn and they want to strip away delusions and see it for themselves. The fact that they expend this time and energy for the sake of something they’ve neither seen nor experienced: this is faith. Otherwise, why waste a year of effort with no return? Faith is acting on behalf of an Unknown, that you cannot know yet feel connected to.
Christ as found in the Gospels is quite different than what you see in churches, so I don’t blame you if it feels stale and out of place there. If you study the lives of early Christian mystics, I think you’d find a lot more in common with Zen than even most here would be willing to accept.
But it’s your existence and it’s worth exploring. Neither church nor r/zen are the places for answers, but we’re happy to burrow into any set-doubt that could lead to a moment’s realization.
You might even find that Zen can make church an interesting subject of observation. Just watch out for the feeling that you’ve achieved an elevated viewpoint above most others — which can lead to many of the other behaviors you’ll find here too. Yet none of us know, because the mind isn’t the tool of progress. We’re simply advocates of the ordinary, rather than believers in the extraordinary.
Even when my brain is getting bored and distracted and doesn’t want to just observe, but to do something, I observe that too and try to notice the extent of the discomfort. What’s important is that there is no “ideal me” that I’m trying to reach, there is always just whatever is.
This is very good advice.
Walking meditation, working meditation. Should there be a difference?
Nix is one of my favorite things. It feels a bit like Git during the early days, UX and documentation wise, but it’s been very much worth the effort.
In your .envrc source https://github.com/jwiegley/nix-config/blob/master/bin/use_nix.sh and call the function use_nix.
I use a caching script to eliminate that delay.
Good point, misleading analogy.
Second direnv-mode. Combined with Nix it’s now how I work on all projects.
I’m curious why you ask. Great quotes, though, thank you.
If a mirror is polished well enough, you’re sure to bump your head.
Thanks for passing it on. :)
I love the question.
I’ve never held anything in mind regarding Void. It’s like when rain falls on my face: I can’t see it, I can’t count the drops, but there is a something recognizable about the whole of it.
Music to my ears.
I was thinking of something along these lines:
All these phenomena are intrinsically void and yet this Mind with which they are identical is no mere nothingness. By this I mean that it does exist, but in a way too marvellous for us to comprehend. It is an existence which is no existence, a non-existence which is nevertheless existence. So this true Void does in some marvellous way ‘exist’. — Huangpo
Well, you’re no fun. :)
Do tell!
Is it the nothing that is Void — all things being Mind — or the nothing that divides between is and is not? What somebody is reported to have said long ago is just an echo.
For example, in Arabic there is the nothingness of a candle held up to the sun; the nothingness of a quiet room ripe for the least sound; and the nothingness of non-existence: both actual and potential.
Not cutting was the aim. :)
I wonder what was translated as “nothing” there, because on its face it doesn’t illuminate.
The insufferable asshole is an elegant counterpoint. Don’t underestimate their value!
The light is the brightly manifesting point; the dark is its knowledge form. Dividing the two cuts the head from the body. Negating them is playing the ostrich.
Gets you right in the feels.
Which “it” is that?
I can’t deny a man who shrugs off the bonds of should. Well met.
"We never had to take any of it seriously, did we?" she whispered. "No, we never had to." — Atlas Shrugged
Greetings, AB!
Then we have two meanings at play: meaning through being (an Apple nourishes, independent of belief or acknowledgement) and meaning through ascription. An interesting vein to explore.
things have no meaning nor not no meaning...
We should retire this kind of non-speech. Silence communicates the exact same.
I call out whenever I see the baby going out with the bath water, since it’s such a common interpretation around these parts. And now my comment returns to the void, even though we both are changed. :)
There is a point where a perceiving that nothing intrinisically matters might occur.
This still sounds like a nihilistic easy-way-out. Erasing all meaning from perception doesn’t mean the dog doesn’t care if you feed him, or what you feed him. Taking a walk off a cliff has a different meaning than down a garden path. Even the old worthies did not treat all goods as fungible.
It resonates here, /u/hookdump.
What you all have from your parents innately is the Unborn Buddha Mind alone.
So I received the Unborn at... birth?
Yes! Better to cultivate a good relationship with ignorance and error, because those friends come to visit far more often.
And no story in words can ever relate the smell!
One side holds to Zen: Instant realization! The other grabs it tight: Quiet sitting!
Nanquan splits the non-dual in two, giving each their part.
The sound of one hand clapping is a resonant purr. When the blade of your eye catches the light: when the cut of your tongue leaves the sheath: take care. A gentle stroke is the right technique.
Next we’ll learn that Euclid slept with little boys, and so everything we know about triangles should be discarded!
Why are we even debating these old masters like they have anything to do with our practice? I want to know if YOU can keep the cat alive.
You don’t have to walk on eggshells, however absurd some members of this community wish to be. Present your ideas and respond to those who seem worth engaging. No one here has authority over what Zen is, or what should be discussed, or even — shocker — who is a sex predator and who isn’t.
Just continuing the modernization of the old adage about mountains and lakes in the OP. Mostly comedic, very little insight added.
From shit sticks to shitposts.
I thought it was a bit strange to request that we change the forum based on what you like or dislike, but it certainly wasn’t a bother, or any more out of place than what plenty others have said. Be at peace; this where all madness of mind is welcome: the more sane it is, the more sinister. :)
Nothing sheds light on what we fear quite like understanding.— even if only to scatter the shadows our own light has made.
You may be conflating existence with function.
All the colors are equally light; even so, the differences we perceive are what make vision. The singular essence of light doesn’t mean that everything has to be white.
It seems like the Way of Linji is to play-act mind, when words and silent observation don't cut it.
I do tend to think that if the Buddha hadn’t appeared in India, I doubt we’d be discussing meditation so much.
Goodbye again! See you in the new year! ;)
Methinks the lady doth protest too much.
Picking the absolute worst time to change position is something I have a word for: Normal.
It’s not about what happened this month, but what will happen from now until retirement, for that account.
When you ask for something you already have, expect cheeky answers. :)
I’d recommend choosing a target before opening the position. Mine is 50-75% profit, and I avoid asking what if’s, because a sound strategy beats luck in the long run.
Learn how ducks mate.
If one’s vision of Mind leads to distinguishing themselves from others, then I don’t know what they saw.
The words aren’t trying to communicate information, but to prompt a sudden shift in perspective. Sometimes a question is answered in a way intended to make the questioner realize the absurdity or narrowness of their question.
Imagine a man is standing in a river complaining of thirst and asking what he should do. You shout out, “Sleep on it!”
To an observer without context, it may deeply puzzle them what sleeping in this instance has to do with finding water. But if the man in the river lies down, he’ll figure it out.
Who has blocked it again?
I wonder how you can kill what never lived.
Should be 50:1. It’s given in their website.
If you can lose it by just living, you never had it. Follow your passion and find what can’t be lost.
I’m still trying to unread my first one.
When Reddit asks if it’s over, then it’s due to come back.
I find that statements like this are best expressed by saying nothing at all. :)
Ok, if I understand, you're presenting that since the brain is real, thoughts are equally real because they're an activity of the brain? The map/territory idea was a little more compelling, because at least the map is something I can burn to keep me warm...
But do what works for you, /u/jungle_toad! I'm interested to hear how it plays out.
Where inside? Which part? Can you point to mind?
Then I’ll ask you this: all those worlds you venture in while asleep, where are they?
Now that you know their explanation, did it help?
I find my anger to be strongly connected to expectation.
Hint: it also begins with ‘m’.
Or ask the little kid who asked his mother at the Canadian border: “Where is the line?”
Truths only arise from confusion.
Um, no?
There are no meters in reality, despite all the measuring that you do.
This dichotomy brought to you by mind, the maker of all things good and bad.
To learn to fly, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. — Adams
I keep waiting to hear what “exist” actually means.
Tell me more about this “self” that you’re aware of?
There’s a difference between thinking — which is crazy useful — and living through the medium of thoughts.
I read the question as suggesting: If you were there, you’d know as a matter of course; if you’re not, why is that your question?
Much of the time, I see thoughts used to produce expected, desired or dreaded feelings.
I’m not sure about going straight to “the world has no meaning”, which sounds a bit nihilistic and too... easy.
Maybe it has loads of meaning; only concepts can’t get me there.
This reminds me of watching some guy looking at ancient statues through his camcorder. I watched him watching them, and he never took his eyes off the screen. The fact that he was living through the lens didn’t mean there wasn’t something to see.
When you say you want to be a millionaire at 50, what you probably mean is that you want today’s buying power equivalent of having millions at 50. Keep that in mind when calculating possible returns.
Is it really a good time to focus on differences, though? ;-)
It sounds as if you’re talking about the “social scale” where people are weighed, generally based on media or historical portrayals of success and goodness.
Put the achieving bit on pause for a moment. Perceive the scale. Find its origin and substance. Where did this idea of “greatness” come from, and what is its meaning?
You might enjoy the book “Siddhartha”, by Herman Hesse.
And futures, and currencies. :)
When the wind blows on your face, do you disconnect or latch onto it?
It is impenetrable and obscure in the world where things are impenetrable and obscure. You start with a lineage; but can you end without one?
He interrupted the formalisms by which people engage with life.
Futures offer leverage based on the size of their margin requirement, which varies by the type of contract.
A “bowl” only exists as a thing to be filled. Rice in the bowl indicates completion relative to purpose. It implies the difference between being empty, and just wood.
Even with rice in the bowl, emptiness returns to bowl-nature. Every atom samadhi, though keenly apprehending reality, is still trying where no effort is needed.
Detachment from all things is a interesting idea. Is a lotus flower on the water detached from it? It is entirely wet on one side, dry on the other. In the water, but not of the water.
Check out the Medallion Fund.
I like it. :)
It’s all about risk. Since banks have a higher chance of defaulting than the US government, you ought to be able to find better rates given the same term. And both can be traded in the secondary market.
You’re asking for free investment advice on the Internet. Watch out, or you’ll get what you paid for.
“Price is what you pay, value is what you get.” — Buffet
Asking what Amazon is actually worth is a tricky question, because you also have to account for future markets and growth and technological advances we haven’t seen yet. All this is part of the price of a stock.
At the same time, people will pay for a stock based solely on what they think might happen (“it will go up again!”) or what has happened recently (“it just went down!”).
I can’t tell you what Amazon should be priced at, or will be worth, in the near term or long term. But I own plenty of their stock and like their business model, even if the stock market as a whole is pricing things a bit optimistically.
At the end of the day you have to hit the books and understand all the numbers and their implications, or you’ll be stuck with the analysis of others. There’s really no shortcut if you want to invest in individual companies. Hence why so many choose indexed ETFs as a much simpler way to share in the success of the US market.
In fact, the work you have to do is entirely the work you’ve given to yourself. Imagine if Sisyphus found out the rock was his own skull.
My advice is to hire a lawyer before you go any further commercializing food products. Make sure you know how things will play out when (if) you get sued. America is a ridiculously litigious place these days.
The high IV is your clue. That’s effectively expert participants telling you “we have no idea what will happen” — measured in dollars even! I’d Google “trading volatility” to get some ideas of various strategies.
Also, I admire the spirit of your approach. If someone thinks the sun is a ball of fire, they’re right and they’re wrong and really I’d rather laugh along with them because neither of us is actually impacted by that knowledge. Embracing what is, that’s the key.
Fortunately, the Unborn cannot die, so you’ve chosen an easy task to keep it alive. :)
Watch Ray Dalio’s YouTube video on understanding the economic machine.
Anyone trying to find the door to leave instantly fails.
You can’t live life meaningfully until you say what that meaning is. Zen can help you go slowly mad in this respect, until you realize you’ve been carrying a tiger in your back, feeding him your very flesh. Throwing him off is quite the relief.
You can’t create a conceptual structure around Zen. But you can call anything “Zen” that you like, so historically it does seem to happen.
Zen is perfectly safe from whatever anyone says about it, but it may just happen that someday, there won’t be any Zen anymore. Merely echoes in a windstorm resolving into debated whispers. The dream of a world of sleepers.
Expecting them to know to ask you, when you probably knew your actions would be misinterpreted, is being manipulative. You offered your friend no support in a time of need, and then expected him to meet you on your terms if he wanted to understand why.
“Heavier than heaven” is a good example. While conveying a sense of meaning and significance, it means nothing at all and can never become a subject of observation or experience. Zen is the needle for all your bubbles.
You can use his harassment to test your mettle, or you can block him and enjoy the forum without that absurdity. Just don’t feel like it’s a moral choice; value your time.
It’s all about position sizing. If you put in 5% of your available capital, I wouldn’t sweat it. It’s a gamble, but won’t break the bank. If you put in 50%, then I’m not sure the risk merits the investment, unless you know a great deal about Aramco and how the market will digest this IPO. It’s currently not the best time for high-flyers.
900 times is just them getting familiar with the characters.
One difference between Rust and the two languages you mention is that Rust has no “runtime” — a consequence of which is that all memory management is largely up to you. Fortunately the Rust type-checker helps to make programs sane in this respect, but you still need to know a lot more about how memory works than before. You should study what it means for objects to live on the stack or on the heap, lexical scoping, extent, ownership, and memory layout. I believe you can be quite happy in Python without knowing any of these things at all.
Well, don’t mind me then, see how it plays out after a while and report back!
Don’t forget how much short sellers were squeezing it up. It should trade in a more representative fashion now, one would hope. I’ve been waiting for sanity to return.
But other traders know this too. :)
I would expect the discount to be priced into the option already, so rather than collecting $1.30 for a stock paying a $0.30 dividend, you’re collecting $1.00.
If you were assigned, the stock is under your strike, and due to the payout, is now lower still. Basically what it means is that your break even is strike minus premium minus dividend. But I don’t see anything remarkable enough about that to especially recommend the strategy.
I’ve seen the same strategy suggested, back-tested more than 20 years, and it seems worth considering. Too bad it will take 20 more years before you really learn if it’s a good idea in the markets to come.
You’ll get the dividend, but the price of the stock will likely fall further by just as much.
I do appreciate when someone does their homework. I was indeed being hyperbolic. :)
Especially with food that has 500 ingredients. That would be like making your own Twinkies.
Probably not, since you don’t know how they might be hedging that bet.
I believe it’s $25,000.
Someone else is willing to bet $1.40 per share that you’re wrong.
Call it a pet rock and it will all make sense.
With TD Ameritrade, you would place a limit order with Time In Force set to EXT_GTC. It could trade as early as 1am PST, or 24 hours for certain ETFs.
Nor would a person in that position ever fail to capitalize their sentences. My company with a market cap of $92 trillion says: Try again.
Are you asking if it’s morally right, or if it makes business sense? You have to weigh the merits of what running the story means for your business, compared to the income from advertising. Is the story important enough? Is being independent of your advertisers important enough? Do you have other, equally important stories you could publish instead, or is it really do or die for you to publish these? Sounds like a typical cost/benefit scenario that you need to map out.
Don’t trust your feelings once you’re in a position. Go back to your pre-purchase analysis and tally it up with the facts. It should require strong evidence to get out. Remember that you’re pitting rationality and data against being human. We suck at prediction, and excel at overreaction from our fear of loss.
It really depends on sector volatility and my general outlook on the market. If I really want to own the stock no matter what, I’ll choose further out to increase premium, cashing out at 50-75% profit before expiration if that should occur. If I’m betting on recovery after an exaggerated earnings drop (or vice versa), I’ll choose a shorter timeframe because I’m betting on the short term correction, but don’t have a solid idea of what performance will be over the next several weeks.
I tend to sell puts at longer DTE than (covered) calls, because I find there’s more chance of losing out on upside than the added premium accounts for. Market swings tend to outpace market expectations in my preferred sector (technology).
I use <5 mostly, <20, and 30-60 less often.
Increasing global consciousness is a hard job.
LoL! :)
There is a developer API...
Who asked? Who answered?
Do you wake up all at once, or do you become more conscious as you go?
The body is all stick!
Makes sense, thank you!
Thank you for those words of wisdom.
I’m not sure why you’d do that. If it goes up your profits would be capped; if it goes too much down you only get the difference in premium; and the longer you wait to sell you lose theta.
If you think it’s going higher, don’t sell the call. If you think it’s going lower or will trade flat, sell the one you have.
Sites like options calculator will show you all of this.
I recommend this article for further in-depth reading: https://tickertape.tdameritrade.com/trading/how-does-portfolio-margin-work--15553
Note that TD Ameritrade not only requires a certain amount of trading experience (for example, with hedging), but also a minimum account balance of $125k.
Unless I misunderstand you, it’s closer to 5x. In a regular 2:1 margin account, you can’t borrow more than the value of the marginable securities and cash that you own.
In the case of PM it means you can be invested in a stock, only having to “own” 15% of the value of that stock. So with $15 you could hold $100 in value. You’ll have to cover if it goes up in price.
Limits are generally in your favor. A limit sell of $100 sells at that price or higher. A stop loss sell at $100 typically sells at that price or lower.
Portfolio margin is in the range of 6.1:1. Because the chance of blowout is so much higher, at TD you need to be qualified for it.
How do you address those other people apart from mind? I didn’t say they weren’t there. :)
No understanding is real. Do more than just doubt it. Introduce it to the day.
Ideas don’t have power to influence you. The damning thing to realize is that you want to be influenced. You generate a sense of reality, and use the cycle of thought and feeling to cement that illusion. Why? Because you’re not ready for the alternative. The Void is like stepping off a cliff on a moonless night; except it’s only a cliff because you think it is.
There was a time when there were no purple horseshoes.
Mic drop.
Once you’re free, what is the first thing you’ll do?
Weren’t some of the venerated masters viewed by the state as political criminals?
one must realize the error in...
As long as you know that the only “one” you could be addressing is yourself.
Don’t forget about the mystery investor(s) who are literally making billions on these claims. I sure hope the SEC is doing something.
Good to know, thanks.
My BAC dividend took three weeks after the ex-dividend date to appear. I’d say keep an eye on it, call and complain after a month.
YTD is fine for longer time scale investing.
I’m pretty sure the web interface should be able to show you that info, because ThinkOrSwim sure can.
I use Ledger for tracking everything, a command-line based, double entry accounting system. It’s very manual, but offers immense control.
Those probability numbers are calculated based on options traffic that day. So, they have no predictive power beyond the ability of market participants to predict the underlying. I’ve seen it frequently happen that a 5% chance was completely blown through just the next day. This especially happens around earnings.
Benzinga Pro aims to be a service matching that description, though I found the news offered to be pretty much that same as what I see in TOS.
Technically speaking, he just did exactly that.
Keep in mind that the last ten years have been the longest bull market in history. “Past results do not indicate future performance.“
I did say usually...
I bought Amazon in July. If I sold it today, I’d lose four figures. I’m still waiting for it to just return to break-even.
If you can wait ten years and longer, then you should read up on value investing.
It usually means that you get to buy the stock at a significant discount in the future. However, this depends on the stock actually trading before the options expire.
Most investments (in stocks) aren’t likely to move much more than two standard deviations on a given day, so some people calculate their require margin based on such a maximum daily drawdown limit. This is how margin requirements are calculated for TD Ameritrade accounts that have Portfolio Martin enabled.
For example, in Forex my leverage is 50:1, so I use $200 to control $10,000. There is a risk of losing $9,800 more than my investment, but then again, major governments aren’t likely to collapse all at once in a single day, so my computed margin risk is much lower, more like $3,000. However, as the price moves against me, I may need to shore up the account to stay within that margin limit, or else close out the position at the current loss.
5:1 means a 20% investment could turn into a full loss.
Pathogen are addressed, not by giving them what conducive to life, but what is inimical: antibiotics, alcohol, excessive heat.
You could buy VIX futures too.
Ah, that’s why trading was suspended today..
Can you give me your pitch as to why the world needs it?
One of the open source projects I maintain was written in C++ between 2003-2006. I’ve never once had to update it for this reason, even though C++ has had several major revisions since. Compilers are committed to supporting the version of C++ that I wrote it in, because there’s a standard they aren’t ready to abandon.
Sweet! Now what?
There are some who use Zen and it’s foreignness to “elevate” themselves in their own mind above the common rabble.
When I meet these, I like to either speak their language, or double down on commonness. All depends on the sense of humor involved...
My wife insists that a tree is just a tree. Sometimes, she’s right.
Most people that are going to own cars do, or the numbers are predictable (example, looking at birth rate and job numbers).
But how people are going to buy all electric cars in the next ten years? When you can put a clear number on that, prices should stabilize.
All the same, your assurance that this is the case doesn’t have quite the same weight as a compiler that says it supports the C++17 ISO standard
Timing the market is not impossible, it’s just extremely hard to do consistently. And it’s almost impossible to do it profitably over the long run, because that would mean you have some kind of knowledge or ability that millions of very wealthy, very intelligent, very well-connected people don’t have.
One thing to be aware of is that the language is still young enough that some parts of your code may need to be rewritten if you intend on staying up-to-date with the latest version of the compiler.
TD Ameritrade has a pretty extensive catalog, but you can only access it through their web interface.
-r isn’t a bug. Use --limit any(commodity == ‘$’).
Check out UHAL in the after market. :)
A stop loss enters a market order to SELL below a certain price. What you’re describing is a limit order to BUY as it drops in price through your targets.
My empty scalp can hold about six cups worth of the ocean.
Is there a five year old who needs it explained?
When the thing you strike with (mind) has no real thing to strike against (Reality), what is it accomplishing? It tries to clap, clearly, so what is the sound it must be hearing to keep it going? When you see the farce, the jig is up.
People take this question to be asking about the sound; what if it’s wondering about the action of the lone hand? If dualism is not real, what have you been up to?
Max out retirement funds as early as humanly possible. You can invest with those accounts, so it’s not like you can’t learn with them. But the effects of deferring taxes will have a huge impact over the course of your career.
Exactly this. I’d be short as many /ES futures contracts as my margin would allow. But I’d need 100% certainty. Losing means no retirement.
If that’s really how you want to spend $30k, go for it. Just do it assuming that you’re throwing it away. If it works, that should be the surprise, not losing it.
I wasn’t assuming a need to finance the put option by trading away the upside potential.
Unless we’re at the beginning of a series of 10+ year runs...
Success can be great for your returns, but deadly to your investor’s mindset. A good correction will fix that, though.
Sometimes I’ve seen ridiculous ask prices, just hoping for an unaware buyer who puts in a market order without looking at the spread.
When you sell a deep in the money call, you are effectively selling at today’s price. The main reason to do this is that you’re certain the stock is about to drop, but for whatever reason you don’t want to sell the underlying, you don’t want to risk further capital for a put, and you want the highest delta you can get. If you’re right, you buy back the call and realize the profit. If you’re wrong, you basically sold the stock, but won’t transfer the shares until expiration.
If you think of the group of people you know, not just individuals, some things become pretty plainly clear. It’s not a question of moral standards to know that a boy and a girl, attracted to each other, left alone to sleep in the same bed, has more potential for unwanted pregnancy than if they sleep separately.
It’s when you are looking for creative interpretations of these things that you already have your answer. :)
You could keep your stake and buy a put option, selling after the expected correction. This way if you’re wrong you lose about the same as you would have lost by selling and repurchasing after a rise, and if you’re right you make the money you had hoped for from the drop.
Instead of thinking of the market as trading equities, think of it as trading risk. Then you can look for equivalent positions to place your risk trade, when tax complications are involved.
You could add all of these to a watchlist on seekingalpha.com for free, and then read lots of opinion pieces about these particular stocks, or their related competitors.
Why invest in them, and then check the decision with us? Why did you buy them at all? Is that reason no longer valid?
A pretty easy guideline to follow on chastity questions: don’t ask if you think it’s being chaste or not, ask if everyone you know would think so.
It’s way too easy to talk yourself into absolutely anything where sexual desires are concerned.
A LEAP put today, that you sell on a drop in a few weeks, is a reasonable idea based on what we know today. Holding it for long term, though, expecting downward price movement to outpace theta decay? There are too many variables for me to be willing to take that risk when there are easier bets at hand. Are you so sure Netflix won’t pivot in a way that negates current threats, as they did with the move from DVD to streaming?
Volatile bear markets are good for selling covered calls on a bump, and then buying the back after the next drop.
When things are bad for buying and holding equities, look to other instruments.
A CD is a Certificate of Deposit. It's effectively a promissory note from a bank to pay you back on a certain date at a certain rate of interest. It should be about as reliable as the bank itself. You need to wait until the date of maturity, however, unless you buy it through a brokerage (like TD Ameritrade) that allows you to sell it as a tradable security. I think ordinarily there is a penalty for early liquidation at the bank.
This is actually a fairly subtle point, as evidenced by the volume of words you've received in response. It concerns the station of the Primal Will, and how it came into being. The Báb writes:
Bear thou witness ... that verily God, glorified be He, hath ever been, and will ever exist without anything to exist with Him. He verily hath created all things by virtue of His Will (Mashiyyah), and hath created the Will by Itself, out of nothing else.... All things are created and affected by It.
When you think of God "creating" something, it necessarily binds the created with the Creator in a relationship where both parties are existent: first there was one, now there are two. However, the initial "sprinkling from the clouds of Unknowing" -- the origin of the Will -- does not follow this mundane concept of creation, since in those terms we think of "firstness" and "beginning", yet the Primal Will is independent of these. The Báb also writes:
It is this Primal Will which appeareth resplendent in every Prophet and speaketh forth in every revealed Book. It knoweth no beginning, inasmuch as the First deriveth its firstness from It; and knoweth no end, for the Last oweth its lastness unto It.
I have no handy analogy to describe the Uncreated. Countless mystical books will take you to the door of this thought, but remain silent thereafter. It defies all words and concepts:
Such is the state of the wayfarers in this Valley; but the people of the Valleys above this see the end and the beginning as one; nay, they see neither beginning nor end, and witness neither “first” nor “last.” Nay rather, the denizens of the undying city, who dwell in the green garden land, see not even “neither first nor last”; they fly from all that is first, and repulse all that is last. For these have passed over the worlds of names, and fled beyond the worlds of attributes as swift as lightning. Thus is it said: “Absolute Unity excludeth all attributes.” And they have made their dwelling-place in the shadow of the Essence.
The real problem here is shipping. If you intend to get the gold safely back to Earth, it will cost many, many times more than the gold is worth. This will keep it fairly well "locked up" until we build a space elevator or something more efficient at space to ground transfer of heavy mass.
Given your time horizon and expected need for the money, I would also look into CDs or treasury bills, maturing at the time you need to withdraw. It's not that mutual funds are a bad idea, I just don't think they fit your described objectives very well. They are better suited to longer term investors, who don't have any immediate need to withdraw.
Recent tragedies have their costs:
PG&E disclosed that one of its transmission lines may have sparked the Kincade Fire in Sonoma County, despite having turned off a large section of the power grid there, as well as a series of smaller fires in the Bay Area.
The disclosures eroded PG&E's stock and bond prices on concerns that the company could face additional fire-related liability costs, and threatened to stall negotiations among investors in bankruptcy court. The company's shareholders and bondholders have proposed competing plans to pay billions of dollars in liability costs related to a series of deadly fires in 2017 and 2018. ¯
Did you see the shoe, or the foot?
I didn’t walk with the man long enough to know either.
2:1 for Regulation T. 4:1 for day trading accounts, around 6:1 for portfolio margin accounts, and 50:1 for Forex. Futures vary by the commodity.
I wish I’d learned a few things about time management early on, realistic goal setting, how to create and stick to plans and strategies for achieving those goals, and effectively communicating enthusiasm to those you might work with. Some of that comes naturally to some people, others never really learn it. Finding a good mentor is as important as choosing a school.
But above all, take it as your own personal responsibility to succeed — always. Even when nothing is fair or going your way. Never wait for anyone else to tell you what to do or when to do it. Asking help of others is great, but you must believe in your heart that the buck stops with you. Then you won’t rest until you see your dream taking shape day by day.
I’d say you let yourself lose sight of the goal, and got wrapped up in the means. What is it that you what? If it’s financial stability, you have to start with actual stability. If it’s the thrill, there are cheaper ways.
Figure out what drives you first, then take a look at all the different ways you could achieve the same end. Money is rarely the answer, even if it’s sometimes an effective tool. But more often I think it’s used as a substitute for self reflection.
It depends on your broker. Mine will sell on expiry unless I call on the last day and request otherwise.
It’s not them you want to defeat, it’s you.
I think this can also happen in Forex when someone is trading many billions of dollars.
I like dailyfx.com for Forex news.
And what if there is a drawback in the dollar?
As you’ve now realized, buying options is a bet against several things: direction, time and volatility. What is working in your favor in exchange are leverage, maximum risk and no early assignment risk. It’s a somewhat complex trade-off.
Well, it could be a faceless machine too. :) Contracts that you sell might go to an algo trader.
With that much time remaining, the odds of assignments are very low, since it's not worthwhile to the holder of the option.
Of the many options I've sold, I've only faced early exercise once. According to the OIC:
Option holders only exercise about 7% of options. The percentage hasn't varied much over the years. That does not mean that you can only be assigned on 7% of your short option. It means that, in general, option exercises are not that common.
EFTs can fail, in which case the assets remaining are divided and paid out. From one source on the Web:
Eric Balchunas, an ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, notes that during the past five years, 1,050 ETFs have launched. During the same period, more than 900 ETFs have folded. Their average lifespan is just 3.4 years.
On ETFs folding:
Like mutual funds, ETFs may fall under duress if it can no longer validate the expense of operations through investor fees. As an ETF loses assets, the fund will lose investors, increasing the cost of operating per investor. If the fund is not able to recover the lost interest, it may have to close down. Nevertheless, the closing of an ETF is an orderly and efficient process, and investors are given plenty of warning so they can act accordingly.
Before providers close the shutters on their ETFs, investors are notified three to four weeks prior to the stop date, and in the meantime, the ETF will still operate as usual during normal trading hours. In the event a firm shuts down an ETF, investors have one of two choices: sell your position before the final trading date, or wait for the fund to close and the check to come in. This can create tax consequences, and no investor likes surprises.
To really know why a stock moves requires a huge amount of information and insight:
Company fundamentals and performance
Interest rates and the value of the dollar
Investor sentiment and economic outlook
Actions of institutional investors (cf. "market gamma")
News events (that may only have a momentary, sensational factor)
Human psychology
And more...
The market is a mix of rational and irrational factors. No one will ever know them all, and many are only known after the fact. With time you can become better informed, and even spot patterns, but always bear in mind: https://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2013/01/15/cat-beats-professionals-at-stock-picking/
If you drink the same tea every day, are you the same person every day? Yet some try very hard to build a sense of continuity with the past.
Are you talking about support and resistance? or trading lockouts, such as in the futures market?
If it has decent premiums but low price, then you're trading on risk. I've trade NFLX options this way, and been assigned several times. It usually goes up afterward, but sometimes takes many weeks before it recovers. And some day it might not.
I'm not quite sure what your question is... Brokers can still make money on spreads, order routing, selling trade information, margin loans, etc.
If the stock suddenly drops, a call also limits your loss.
If you're very bullish, one thing you could do is buy a call very far out in time, say 2 years away. That ups the risk, but gives you some time to see if your assessment was correct. Even then, you should still decide how much you're willing to lose, and sell the option if it appears that things are not what you expected.
Now that options cost so much less to trade, it may be worth giving these a try. Until now I've not used them.
I love it when deep questions of philosophy, having perplexed sages throughout the ages, are dismissed by a moment's common sense reasoning. But of course this table exists! I have my feet on it.
Does a wave actually exist? Can you separate it from the water?
There is a difference between what is functional and notional, and what is existential.
I'm not aware of this having a name, but it almost fits the definition of a "Straddle vs. Put: 3 Way".
I've modeled your proposal to see what the effect on risk/reward is: It increases maximum loss in order to get back an unlimited upside, while lowering the breakeven price at expiration.
However, you won't be able to sell one of these; it will be a debit strategy, hence the increased maximum loss.
This is called a credit spread. You earn the credit for the sale, with your risk being the difference between the strikes. For example, if it expires lower, you’d owe ($110-$105)*100-credit. Buying the $105 put isn’t quite enough to offset the loss from the $110 put that you sold.
I think I understand where you’re coming from. I’m a bit allergic to “Zen is”, “Zen is not” type sentences. Unless they fuel an existential dread, then likely they are being misused.
Too many seem to want to “put the question to rest”, when the question is the point of having a Zen at all. It’s not the journey: it’s the erosion of your beautiful journey dream, leaving you with nothing to say.
I’m interested in some good recommendations too. Yesterday I learned about the Charm greek and how it relates to gamma hedging. Is there a good book that really goes into serious depth on these aspects of options trading?
So, it’s a harmonious intellectual groundedness within and between the not so straightforward nature of the absolute/conventional reality dichotomy.
But why has the barbarian from the West no beard?
I might suggest that the pole is the lineage and the teachings. How do you continue once you’ve read them all and believe you understand? How do reach to where Huangbo can’t take you?
Also be aware that on the ex-dividend date, the price usually drops by the amount of that dividend.
The price became hyper inflated. If there were zero competitors it might be justified (the future of fake meats might be huge), but newcomers are entering the field every week. Reality is catching up with the hype, and recent events are making people a little more sober.
I think it very much is. The mind is quite clever, so it takes this whole Void thing that you’re after and turns it into another goal within itself. The moment anything makes you more satisfied about who you are, beware. Slipping into the Void is much more like jumping into a well on a moonless night, just because you heard a splash and some laughter earlier.
What else? The thing I find surprising is how much idealism gets laid into this. When you’re embracing something that exposes the myths of the modern mind, it should be dismaying, not done made for TV liberation. I think that only comes when you’re not invested in outcomes anymore.
He’s quite right. I put in a limit sell of 10 NET options, and right before the bell 5 of them sold. Since they were above MARK, I’m assuming I was the only seller at that price and got paired up with someone’s market order.
Sure, freedom, but what is freedom when you have no idea what to do with it? It’s not a good unto itself. A chicken who leaves the coop is free, but the fox is the one who gains.
What is Zen? Zen isn't anything, and Zen is everything. It is what it is to you right now.
This just renders the word meaningless. Better to say you now practice foovargle, because the same could equally be said of that.
Lao Tsu nailed this one long ago.
All attainments have beauty for a moment. If they fail to wither and die, look for the Wal*Mart sticker.
The practice of Zen is like having a worm in your brain, eroding concepts and leaving you with the realization that most of your motives in life are just as vapid and misdirected as you had feared.
When you’ve spent half a life building up and relying on concepts, how the hell is popping that balloon supposed to leave you with any sense of how to face tomorrow? You’ve invested a whole education in a world you know how to maneuver within. None of that prepares you for what’s sitting in the mirror.
Talk about the hot iron ball.
Securitized loans, such as real estate mortgages (REIT) and student loans (SLABS).
Perhaps go in 5% a month over the next two years.
Given that it closed the week at $1748 in the after market, you made it by the skin of your teeth.
News cannot be predicted, and in this case the JEDI decision almost got you assigned a lot of equity. It’s always good when calculating risk to consider these unseen “maybe” factors, and how much you’re opening yourself to them. We knew the JEDI decision was coming soon, I just didn’t know it would be late Friday or which way it would go.
Initially your post title made me think you were having difficulty with ligatures... ;)
From the chart, click on the time frame button at the top-ish area, then select Time Frames (instead of the default, which is Favorites), and then pick Tick instead of Time. You can add whatever you pick to your favorites. I use "Today/233 ticks".
Also try out tick charts instead of time charts for intraday charting. It well give you a sense of how price is moving by activity rather than time. Sometimes the two views tell a different story.
Another difference, aside from sound, is the effect on travel distance.
Things are busy busy with the details of living. I like that you're still here; makes it fun to stop by and see what my friend is up to.
Option contracts are for 100 shares, so you'd sell 100 shares and get the $10 profit from each share.
That's how Emacs is meant to be used.
Assume you didn’t have those shares today. If that were the case, would you buy them? If the answer is no, likely you should sell. Why own something you wouldn’t be willing to buy today?
What would be asking, without Mind?
You!
I wonder, who are you actually speaking to, and why?
Without it, you wouldn't feel a need to know.
Doesn't Zen tradition appear nonsensical and bizarre at times? Is it any different than shit sticks and killing Buddhas and a puddle of piss? Don't tempt me!
Is that everything as in all the things, or everything as in the only thing?
Say you have 100 XYZ that you bought at $100. Then you sell a call at $110 for, say, $0.90. You collect $90 premium, and this is yours to keep.
If the stock is anywhere under $110, nothing happens and you're $90 richer. If it's $110 or above, the contract will expire and your broker will assign you the CALL, which means they'll sell your shares at $110. You keep $90 + $10 * 100, or $1,090. This is your max possible profit on this equity+option position: No matter how much higher than $110 the shares go, you still only get $1,090.
A few weeks ago I bought 1k shares of BAC, and then sold 10 CALL contracts ATM, expecting it to go lower. Well, it didn't. I had to watch the value of those shares reach over $4k without being able to sell (because I didn't want to hold naked call options). In the end I made $90 off that trade, but whoever bought the call from me made several thousand. But this is how it goes.
Market capitalization includes both intrinsic value and market expectations. There is a belief that the company is worth more than its value today. Like buying a young tree that you hope will bear fruit in a few years.
Yes, you make money on the premium. It’s not terribly risky, because you sell the stock at the strike price. The only downsides to selling calls are losing out on surprise upside, or locking up capital until expiration if it moves against you.
To cut your losses just use a stop loss as you normally would.
If the option cost you X, just put in a limit price for Y. Think of like any other instrument in this regard.
Yes, you can do this by using a market trigger. However, options change in value based on more than just stock price, so you could lose money doing what you just suggested. Better is to compute target loss and profit based on the price of the option itself.
But if you don’t take time into account, the totals will be wrong. You pay more interest in the beginning than at the end.
You’re going to need to take the term of the loan into account, by subtracting posting dates from the end date, and factoring that into the interest calculation.
1989 for me too
Sounds like they just sent you $360. Can you liquidate something if it’s already a soup?
I want to see you keep repeating that for a whole year. Everyone gets it right some of the time.
It’s better to think of your money as “being in the market”, rather than being in a particular stock. This will free you from worrying too much about which part of the market it happens to be in from week to week. If you sell at a loss, you can always buy back in after it loses even more and becomes an opportunity again.
I'm also curious as to what the white means.
TOS is a desktop application that gives you access to most aspects of your account, and also lets you place trades. It is very effective at analyzing, backtesting, charting, and scanning for opportunities.
I love the ThinkOrSwim platforms, and all the training materials that TD Ameritrade offers.
Leverage. Determined risk. Trading volatility. Directional independence.
Not every option has each of these features, but the main point about them is their flexibility as financial instruments. They offer opportunity if you learn how to use them.
That book refers to a ton of context that’s not familiar to Western non-Muslim readers.
Also note that it’s $0.65 because any lower and you’d be double charged for options on indices like SPX. Their fee can’t be lower than the exchange fee for such contracts, without you having to then pay both fees.
I will say that ThinkOrSwim has been a wonderful platform to use.
Good question, that’s quite possible!
Crypto movements still make very little sense to me. I much prefer foreign currencies for that reason.
After a month we negotiated down to no flat fee and $1.25/month. After another month I was ready to transfer the IRA, so I made sure to discuss another rate reduction before transferring.
My local rep was extremely helpful throughout this process, so definitely engage them. They know that their prices build in a high premium, so if you have enough traffic to generate income for them via bid/ask spreads, and keep enough assets with them, they will definitely work with you.
You break economics.
100-1000
I also have a decently high monthly option volume.
There’s one connection I know of: The bank has a rewards credit card that pays a little extra if you transfer the proceeds to the brokerage.
$0.50/contract with no flat fee, but they only approved this after transferring my IRA there.
Just so you know, this was in the news 10 years ago too. It may not be common knowledge, but it’s not new either.
Can confirm.
This sub-thread couldn’t be more on-point.
WeStrand
I believe that no, the loss was factored into the adjusted basis cost of XYZ.
Forex is legit, but there’s a disproportionate amount of total nonsense about it on the Web. I had a hard time finding solid, reliable information about how to use Forex within a larger portfolio. The great majority of what I encountered was snake oil: promising massive returns while failing to mention that the losses could be just as massive.
What’s good and bad about Forex:
Leverage is great, so you don’t need to allocate a lot of capital, but use stop losses (or stop limits) and cap your account size to maximum risk tolerance (a flash crash could result in liquidation and closure, though it’s fairly rare).
There are no transaction fees and holding long/short are mostly equivalent: except that you pay (or earn) interest for holding overnight. Right now, being long 50k GBP/USD costs ~$10/day.
There is volatility, but it’s usually pretty slow and is sometimes range bound, so you might see your investment gyrate around 0 for several days. It’s nice knowing that your investment is extremely unlikely to fall to zero. You’re betting on governments now, not companies. However, leverage means that it could fall more than your total capital allotted.
While technical analysis is still useful, I find that you have to be a LOT more informed to understand Forex movements. Many things can impact prices, in ways that defy a trivial analysis. You’ll want to learn about the central banks, economics, commodity markets, the major economic health indicators, and political news.
It’s not “free money” by any means, the way some YouTube people make it out to be. If anyone is telling you they 4x’d their account in a year, best to ignore them. Or ask why they think the ECB is being so expansionist in a time of decent wage stability, and see if they have as much to say then.
I can’t tell you this year how many premature exits cost me a 10-20% turnaround soon after. They were good companies and I had done my research. Problem is, my emotions disbelieve everything come the day.
True, they are risky in their own. I think shorting /MES is the purest play, but buying a put against it offers the surest risk limit.
Well, part of the plan has to be setting a loss limit, and being willing to hold even when it’s getting close.
On Friday I shorted Nasdaq, and watched as it came 0.5 points within range of my stop loss. It then turned around, so I adjusted my profit limit to exit earlier. Had I left it alone, it would have made the full profit I had planned on. Another lesson.
I think one of the hardest, but most valuable, skills to master in investing is keeping to your plan once executed. It really takes guts sometimes.
Many of the index funds have short variants, like SH for SPX.
I’ve done this, and made money on it, but the day is likely coming when it goes down and never comes up again, so just use an amount of capital that you’re willing to say goodbye to.
Yes, this.
The ability to analyze a position plummets the moment one has entered it, so plan all your outcomes beforehand.
A few days of bad news, and we were looking at an imminent global recession. A few days of good news, and now everything is fixed and we’re headed nowhere but up.
I sense a pattern...
When an event is this well expected beforehand, it’s not likely to cause a crash unless it happens in a surprising way. There’s already a lot of shorting of pounds happening, which would mean plenty of buying to cover after the fact.
To trade the market, you don’t trade the event, but the participants. What are the buyers and sellers likely to do, and why? What is the Bank of England going to do after? Is that being priced in?
No trading decision is ever obvious in advance. The only times you’ll know exactly what to do are in the heat of the moment, when you notice something that other retail traders might be slow to catch on to. But if it’s far in advance, the best you can do is formulate a plan and define your risk limits. If you could be certain about such things, you’d have won the game.
I avoid giving out specific trading advice. I can recommend a great book to you, though, one I've been enjoying a lot: "The Art of Currency Trading", by Brent Donnelly.
Right, and sometimes that overreaction then leads to another as everyone realizes the house isn’t on fire. We’ll see.
I use ThinkOrSwim, and really like the interface. I doubt it’s the lowest cost option.
I’ve been trading on deal/no deal Brexit news lately.
I hear you /u/Xray_Mind and wanted to acknowledge the point you’re making. Money or the lack thereof doesn’t make anyone noble or good, it’s how they choose to live their life.
If my short calls are assigned, wouldn’t I just give up the stock I also bought?
You’re right, and I should have known this, since P = S - C. There’s nothing like being wrong on the Internet to drive a point home.
I sold it at exactly $98, and bought at exactly $168, by legging in with limit orders.
Well, interesting reaction, but I must say you’re right. I think buying at the dip would have been equivalent.
One thing typing all this out did was cause me to think more deeply about it, which has been a learning experience of its own. Next time I’ll do the same before entering the position, and before posting. Thanks.
I also forgot that the cost basis of the purchased shares remains the same, so my only profit is in the rebound.
You haven’t said anything about why you think it will fall. That’s just opinion, while this is r/Investing. Give us some research and indicators.
Spread your risk. I’d recommend never chasing a stock. Even if you do miss an opportunity, the market is full of opportunities. The more plays you have going, the better your odds, generally speaking.
Something being at a low doesn’t necessarily mply an opportunity. It also means most other investors are not expecting it to go up.
Well, the rabbits. Sudden buyer's market for housing.
I do something similar with several stocks, selling and buying back covered calls many times. In this topsy turvy market, I haven’t had to deliver any shares in two months. On the cash secured put side, I've been assigned three times, which added to the covered call rotation. Wheel!
What’s your preferred way of selling volatility?
I’ll need to see that I can beat my expectations five years running before I’d give up my career. Also, you need to be able to make money is every kind of market.
I’m not aware of any technology they’re providing to renters.
In today’s climate, I would imagine medium/low would likely offer around $100-$150 per month in income, if you use an ETF or mutual fund focused on yields and dividends, without reinvesting. The base capital won’t grow much in that case, unless you increase risk and go for growth & income. I don’t have a specific fund to recommend, but if you call Fidelity and tell them your investment objectives, they’d be happy to present you with several possibilities.
Just guessing here, but since I’m assuming you didn’t have ~$7 million to secure the put, they sold protection for capital to close the ITM short. However, the other side didn’t exercise all of its contracts to sell. As the option holder, they can decide how many contracts to close, but your broker didn’t know it would be a partial closure before selling protection. Now it would seem you’re short 10,200 shares, and should buy to cover at the earliest opportunity, Monday pre-market.
I would think the lack of closure is due to your contracts being spread among several individuals, some of whom had higher exercise costs than $0.03/contract would net them.
When do you need it to be liquid again, and what is your risk tolerance?
Stock increases or decreases based on changes in expectation that occur through real events, market forces, news, earnings reports, the actions of institutional investors, people’s opinions, Twitter, etc. Literally anything can change a person’s outlook on how well Wal*mart will do in sales tomorrow, which could generate a buy or sell impulse. Multiply this by millions, and the fact that such buying and selling itself influences the market. It’s a huge feedback loop based on real and imagined events, rational and irrational behavior, hopes and fears. In the aggregate this leads to trends for a variety of reasons, and certain patterns that investors attempt to capitalize on. Historical movements — those that range over decades — are the most reliable source of patterns. They suggest that solid companies with good growth potential do well in the long run. Who’d have thought.
Haha. :) Multiply 2500 by .0208, and add that to your 2500. Then do that again for every month.
Note that 2% a month is quite a lot. Do you mean 2% a year (i.e., APY)? In that case do the same thing as above, but using 0.0208 divided by 12.
Just so you know, “number recipes” aren’t all that math is. Someday I hope you’ll discover abstract math, where there are no numbers: one of the most beautiful things the mind of man has made. After that, this number thing makes a lot more sense, and will seem a lot less complicated.
Are you sure this is right:
MSFT
def msft = close("MSFT");
def msft1 = close("MSFT")[1];
def msfta = nflx > nflx1;
def msftb = nflx < nflx1;
Adam > technology?
Keep in mind that everyone has been seeing this coming for months, so expectations are already factored into current prices. It’s not going to be shocking news when it happens.
As a result, don’t be surprised if there’s a rebound in GBP soon after, as people start taking profits, cashing out of their long USD positions.
You’re betting you’ll beat the six month high by 8 points amid all this unease? That’s bullish. I would avoid losing more to theta and cash out. Am about to do so with an AMZN call on Friday.
In Tech: AI, crypto that’s not Bitcoin (i.e., energy efficient and stable), drone technology.
It affected my views on investing more than any other book so far. I’m also really enjoying “The Art of Currency Trading”. Despite the emphasis on Forex, it also has great sections on technical analysis and the psychological aspects of trading (both yours, and the market you’re trading in).
I watch a set of underlyings that I follow, and look for potential options trades involving them on a daily basis. This gives me a feel for how they’ve responded to the market in the past, and when it would be good to write a CSP with intention to be assigned.
Is this about Forex — economies, central banks, interest rates, politics — or is it mainly technical analysis? If the latter, why not extend it to more instruments?
I think they said “technology” 110 times. It was the 110th time that did the trick.
In
Interesting, and it still wasn’t working for you? What sort of income were you hoping for? What kind of instrument and position sizing were you trading?
WeWork IPO filing:
We are a community company committed to maximum global impact. Our mission is to elevate the world’s consciousness.
How often are you investing, that $6.95 really matters? I'm at nearly $2k spent in fees the last two months. It all depends on whether you're getting more value out of the platform than what you're putting in. TD has excellent software (ThinkOrSwim, for me), copious training materials, and super helpful staff available 24/7. My local branch manager even invited me to a BBQ this month. I'll pay the fees for that. :)
Another thing to know about are "equivalents": that some strategies have equivalent alternatives, with the same profit potential but different tradeoffs. For example, owning stock is equivalent to buying a call and selling a put — except that the latter gives leverage in exchange for expiration. Take a look at the risk/profit profiles for the two equivalents, and you'll see how the graphs are pretty much the same up to expiration.
See https://www.investopedia.com/articles/optioninvestor/09/equivalent-positions.asp for more info.
/u/FartsOnStomach makes a great point: your own investment plan should define what "winning" means. For example, if I can make enough to take my wife out to a good dinner, and not care at all about the price because I realized twice that the same day, I've won and won again.
Be careful making wealth itself a goal; you might just be earning money for your heirs.
Do yourself a favor and don't buy options expiring in a week. You can thank me later.
There are a few strategies for making money selling options:
- Sell cash secured puts to buy stock. You always make money doing this, though you may hold stock at lower than market afterward. So pick a stock that's worth it.
- Sell put credit spreads at high (relative) IV when things are rising or neutral. If you're probability is 70%, and it's priced right, you'll make, for example, $300 7/10 times, and lose $700 3/10 times. However, probabilities are over-estimated by the market. Back-testing research done by Option Alpha shows that the actual probability _over time_ is nearer 83%. Is this pulling pennies from a steamroller? Maybe, if you were expecting huge returns from every trade. But it can be consistent income.
- Sell call credit spreads at high (relative) IV when things are falling or neutral.
- Sell straddles if you expect movement, rolling for credit when you need more time.
- Sell covered calls on stock that you're assigned, if you expect fluctuation under your break-even price (which in turn effectively adjusts the cost basis downward). In markets like the one we have now, I sell and close covered calls on the same equities several times a week.
The thing with selling premium is that several factors work in your favor: vega, theta, and neutrality in the underlying (in addition to beneficial movement). In the case of CSP and CC, your worst outcomes are stock ownership, or exiting at breakeven. You're exchanging open-ended profit for a wider range of successful outcomes.
Even better, tape a bunch of thousand dollar bills to a greyhound, and let him run through a huge crowd at the state fair. You keep whatever is left.
Having a strategy is essential: Not only because it defines your risk and probabilities, but also because it defines the meaning of success and failure.
If your strategy is to make 50% on a straddle, and you get out at 50%, that's all you need to know. Count your win. And if you're going to count your missed gains, be sure to also count your missed losses, and weigh them against each other.
Maybe... your strategy can be improved to either increase the win rate, or increase profit sizes. But before making such a change, backtest to see if the increased risk really wins in the long run.
Nearly all of my major losses have resulted from allowing emotion -- fear, greed, over-confidence, bias -- to undermine my chosen strategy. So much so that nowadays, I don't count my wins in terms of dollars; I count them in terms of holding to my strategy throughout the trade, since doing so consistently has always generated better returns in the long run than rolling the dice.
If you're down because of the events of the past two weeks, I wouldn't worry overly much.
9k is 9k, and whether it grows in Microsoft or it grows in wherever you have it now, growth is growth. What you have to ask yourself is: is it a quality company that can weather market swings; does it have solid fundamentals and good management; is it something you'd be willing to hold for 10 years or longer? If not, why is it a good place for your money? If you're trying to get rich quick, most people just get poor even quicker.
I was looking at period averages, there were definitely outliers in each group though.
Hey, thanks for pointing that out.
I see, I misunderstood the description.
> Doing a debit strategy is also against you cuz you need the right direction(naked calls and puts)
Naked calls and puts are credits, not debits.
Welcome, ProgAce23, it's good to have you here. :)
The only real issue here is dealing with renters. Some are not good. I once managed a property where the renter stopping paying for six month straight. Finally we forgave the debt just to get them to leave. Consider the human side too; and consider property management companies as a way to buffer yourself from it.
If you have the capital, go _at least_ 60 days out, otherwise you're racing against the clock as your option suffers from theta decay quicker each day. I made such a mistake recently, and am preparing to book the loss in a week or two. Usually the only reason I would buy near expiry is that my belief is high and the premium is low enough that I'm willing to give it up (which usually ends up being the case). Otherwise, I prefer far out LEAPs (Jan/Jun 21), which give me lots of time to ride out fluctuations — even major market moves that take months to resolve.
There are certainly things everyone needs, no matter what the economy is doing; though some countries have chosen to socialize those requisities.
Looking at the prices on https://www.macrotrends.net/1333/historical-gold-prices-100-year-chart, it's interesting that gold was in $300s for a long time, then bumped into a range that was double, then triple, and now ~4x for the last ten years. Who knows how much higher it could go up, though it doesn't tend to only go down for a few years before returning higher. Some articles you might like:
You can export your account statement info to a CSV file and then edit to remove the data you don't need. I do this for converting TOS data to Ledger format.
You're right, losses are the price of education — if we learn and improve our principles and strategies. I've had a few such experiences this year, and each was a vastly better teacher than my successes. You might even say one cannot become a solid investor without loss; it's as bad weather to a sailor.
Though I'm not sure I'd say it's not a loss until you pull out. It's definitely a loss in terms of market value. Whether you believe it's still a worthwhile investment is a another question, and if you think it's not anymore, the money is perhaps better transferred elsewhere. Or put this way: If you lose $10k in value and hold, you have to believe your asset is capable of making at least $10k. For a company with good fundamentals and track record, I usually have little trouble believing that.
If you have time to wait, for example if you don't need your money in the next ten to twenty years, then an index ETF, or a blended mutual fund, is a reasonable way to go. Even if everything goes crazy in the next 5 years and the market loses half its value, in the long run we're all betting that civilization to continue to grow and develop. The top investors in the world aren't ceasing to invest at times like this; but they aren't focusing their investments on market timing either. Even though we had two big recessions in the past twenty years, if you had put money into Apple and Microsoft at basically any point, and just held it out, you'd be doing great right now. The key is not to panic, use dollar cost averaging to your advantage, and don't worry too much about money you don't need to spend right away.
Good point. I don't remember the "pre-recession" times quite nearly as well, probably due to the prevailing europhia.
Then I recommend reading “The Intelligent Investor”.
Learn how to budget and save, then how to invest. Avoid going bankrupt multiple times.
I believe their market segment will go sky high, buy BYND isn’t the only game in town. To date I’ve eaten many Impossible Burgers (and love them), but haven’t run into a single Beyond Meat burger in the places I frequent. Makes me wonder.
I want an ETF that rises on volume of market predictions.
You might invest in a runner by training him, providing clothes, food, housing, so that over many years you reap the return of all the races he wins thanks to your help.
You speculate on a race by betting on the runner you think will win. You gamble if you do it without knowing anything about them, or just because their jersey is pretty.
You can speculate on companies after research. I think of it like this: you invest in companies, you speculate on the market.
Gold has value because people think it does, its scarce, and its not going anywhere. It's not a company that can have bad earnings, or a bond that might default. The only thing that changes about gold is how much people want it.
Our people knew there was yellow metal in little chunks up there; but they did not bother with it, because it was not good for anything -- Black Elk.
Sell them when you think they aren't a good investment anymore, and put the money into something better.
Yes, I bought into BAC too, but it was a security I was already waiting to buy for a while.
Are you sure the wash sale rule did not adjust your cost basis?
They expire mid-Saturday (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/expiration-time.asp), so after market action can still have an effect. But it's almost never worth counting on, if you can still sell for anything at all.
Yes, in that case you should be trading swiftly enough to outrun theta. :)
A good principle: don't let your money follow your greed. You already have enough investment to profit nicely if it returns to 20 or higher. I'd leave things be and find more stable investments to diversify your portfolio.
Thinking of how much more you could make by buying in at 3.50 and then 3 is a mentality that will drain away your savings. They call it "throwing good money after bad".
You don't have to make all your profits in one place. The market is full of opportunities. Get better at finding them, rather than betting the farm on a single play.
Theta meas that if you buy an option expiring soon, and SPY stays the same, your option will decay in value to zero just from the passage of time. Time (or theta) decay accelerates toward expiration, but is fairly flat up to 30-60 days prior. Also, time decay hurts you most if you buy near the money options, since that is when it is highest in relation to the overall price of the option.
I'm going to start slowly shifting to equities that can weather a recession better. It's not feeling like IPO holding season anymore.
Buying calls and puts gives you leverage. For $1000 you could potentially make much, much more. People lose lots of money when they get intoxicated by this leverage, and put down their whole life savings for a potential huge return. Yet if the stock doesn't move the way you expect it to, your options expire worthless and you lose everything.
A friend of mine tripled his total capital buying options. He then proceeded to lose everything he had gained.
There are saner, far safer ways to use options, and lots you should be aware of before entering a given option position. Not every use of options is equivalent to rolling dice.
I see. The language of your question and the style of writing caused me think it was auto-generated from a corpus of similar texts. I apologize for misunderstanding.
I use a money manager for my retirement funds, but am considering switching to a self-directed account next year, so I don't yet have any personal experience to offer.
For example: https://projects.haykranen.nl/markov/demo/
I’d play with BAC this week.
In the 1930s would you have guessed the S&P would reach 3000? Well, it will reach 9000 and 90,000 because humans are productive and we discover new markets. There is no end.
The question is whether you can profit during local turbulence. With options there are ways to profit in nearly every type of market, up, down or sideways. Don’t withhold investing because things might go down, or might go up. Learn how to profit when others are uncertain. Invest in value, rather than a particular market condition, provided you have the time to be patient.
There’s a lot of apprehension priced into GBP/USD right now. If you have the stomach to ride through it, it could provide opportunities. But you have to assume Britain will pull through on the other side.
Gold is high right now because many others are thinking the same thing. I’d look into more diversified all weather funds for a long term hold in this market.
Selling a naked call means taking on limited profit for unlimited risk. I would never sell a call without owning the stock, or turning it into a bear credit spread by buying a further OTM call as protection.
`C-c C-w`
This is between different commodities, not the same one. You're exactly right if it was just one, so my sine wave metaphor was completely off.
Not x + (-x) at one moment in time. Think about a sine curve — since the fundamental idea here is vacillating positions — and buying both short and long positions at any point in time.
Anyway, I'm not here to convince you to do anything. Keep doing what works for you.
Why are you posting this Markov-generated text blobs? Reported.
Just bear in mind that each "hop" in your logic introduces a new host of unknowns, exponentially. Pretty soon you may have a sense that diminishing helium supplies will affect companies that rely on laser technology, but you have to make a lot of right guesses to know which.
I tend to agree; I may not like Brexit, but I haven't lost all faith in the Bank of London yet.
But you won't know which to buy until you see market direction. Anyway, if you don't like it, don't do it. I'm just sharing a strategy that does in fact make some money.
I've been thinking the same, and so went long GBP/USD last night (Forex). It's down now, but I was expecting it might get worse for a little while. Just make sure to use a STOP LOSS to limit how wrong your intuition might be.
Another thing you can do is sell and repurchase downward. That is, if you buy at a high and the underlying crashes — and you see a trend that's likely, in your belief, to continue downward — then sell half. If it goes down further, buy back in and adjust your cost basis. If it keeps going up, count the loss today and wait longer to recoup, or decide it's too uncertain and shift to another investment. I just did this with AMZN while writing this.
Money you lose is fully gone, realized or not. The only question to ask yourself is if you believe the asset you hold still has value. If it does, and you think you can make money on it, *that's the sole reason to keep holding it*. Thus, at the start of each day -- say you're down $10k -- ask yourself, "Will my current holdings earn me $10k, or should I be investing elsewhere?" If you think that lost $10k is "yours" and is sitting somewhere waiting to come back to you, this is what leads you to sunk cost thinking and missed opportunities.
Very possibly I'm interpreting, but it seemed like the underlying strategy was to straddle inversely correlated assets, and then sell out one side and wait due to cyclic volatility. Even if I read it wrong, it's another strategy that can work too.
Yeah, I was just using an example of what I actually trade to do generally what he’s suggesting: buy a straddle, sell whichever side profits, and then wait for the recovery.
?
Yes, I’m using options to trade against VIX, should have made that clear.
Yes, was assuming. Thanks for the correction.
What he means is: take SPX and VIX. When VIX goes up, cash out and buy SPX. When SPX goes up, cash out and buy VIX. Repeat.
It can work, if you’re patient. I wouldn’t say it’s automatic wealth, but I can tell you that I buy puts against VIX every time it spikes, and it’s made consistent money several times in a row lately. Not sure it will work out as well in less turbulent times, though.
I use my eyes. When I’m amazed at a product or service, I look to see if the company is openly traded.
I love doom saying. Apparently one of the most fun and rewarding things to do, since people have been getting quite excited about it for thousands of years. Chicken Little is a Jungian archetype.
I would suggest only writing covered calls if you’re ready to keep holding the stock should it go down.
I agree. Anyone can have a lucky break. I’m much more interested in the strategy that led to taking this as a reasonable trade.
The market prices in expectations. Failing to meet an expectation causes the price to be adjusted.
During a bubble, when growth is sky high, there is more spending on credit than on cash generated from productivity. This must at some point lead to a time when more money is spent on reducing debt than on purchases. Since much of that money will come from selling assets that were likely bought at higher price, it can depress the market at scale, and lead to a constant decrease in growth as the economy corrects for earlier inflationary spending.
Ray Dalio has an excellent introductory video on this process, if you Google for “dalio economic machine”.
I would never sell naked (i.e., against margin), only cash secured.
Ha!
If you Google “leveraged index funds danger”, there are a few good articles to check out.
Indeed, good point.
I usually hold 5-8 securities outright, and twice that again in options, but I stick with companies I know.
These funds can utterly fail during sudden market downturns. See the history of the XIV.
Still too much in the head. Covering the walls of my prison with appealing art doesn’t change its nature.
Selling covered calls is best in a neutral market, in my opinion. If it goes up too much, you keep premium but lose out on growth. If it goes down too much, you keep premium but now have unrealized losses against your position. If it stays sideways, you’ve won premium when otherwise you’d just be biding your time.
Then isn’t the problem not that Zen needs defending, but that people are too enraptured by their cocoons? In that case, let them be. Either suffering will prompt them to ask questions, or it won’t; but even the Buddha didn’t police people’s awareness. Zen masters have been complaining about the corruption of the Zen community for... centuries.
Maybe you just need a different audience than Reddit!
Correct. You receive the premium from your buyer.
Yes, there is a catch: no one will want to buy that option, so it’s price would be $0.00.
Your platform should tell you what the market’s expected point move is at expiration. For a 90 point move, you’ll have to go out many months, maybe even years, depending on the stock.
If you ever feel that an option contract is “certain”, then it’s usually also worthless, because that’s part of how the prices are determined. People pay you a premium when they believe you’re taking on more risk than they are.
In the case of your “90 point move tomorrow”, you could write the option, but I think your limit sell would just expire with no buyers. They would see it as throwing money away, unless they knew something.
Then let’s just say it’s wordless and move on. The sun on your face; a full belly; water after a run. The dust that awaits us. Enough.
If you’re selling a call on stock that you own and it’s bullish, you will sell the stock. You always keep the premium, no matter what. If you’re selling a call and you don’t own the stock, and you’re bullish... then I’m not sure if you know the risk profile of writing naked calls. Perhaps you could say more, because I feel that I don’t have the whole picture.
In general you’d buy a call if you’re bullish, sell a call if you’re bearish or neutral, and the reverse for puts. Selling puts carries the risk of assigning stock, while selling calls carries the risk of having to sell stock (which, if you don’t already have it, is potentially unlimited risk).
Words are an opiate. Truth is loudest when it’s the only thing said.
Part of reaching enlightenment is in understanding what we are
In what way is enlightenment related to understanding? That’s how we got into this mess.
Are you selling puts when you’re bearish because you want to buy the stock? Because if you’re looking to just earn the premium, you’d want to do the opposite.
Didn’t say you should avoid it. Just not necessarily where I’d park a billion dollars if my goal was to avoid risk.
Delta is a measure of how much the price of your asset will change with every point move in the underlying. Stock has a delta of 1, so a point of movement is a point of increase or decrease in value. Gamma measures how much delta will change after each such movement.
Deep in the money options can also have a delta of 1. In this case, you’re buying them for leverage — meaning, you can experience 1000 shares worth of movement for what 50 shares might cost, for example — or to take advantage of increases in volatility, which can also affect the value of options. The trade off is that you might be wrong, and the option expires worthless, losing all of your money. This is always the maximum risk for buying options, so avoid over-committing, no matter how much you think the stock will move in your favor. Or, if you like that sort of thing, head over to r/WallStreetBets.
If this seems too complicated, then definitely, buy and sell stock. In fact, find really good companies, and during big market downturns like we just had, buy stock and hold it. There are many examples of this working out wonderfully.
Options can be quite complex, but they offer tremendous flexibility, and can allow you to profit safely — that is, with fixed risk — in every kind of market: bull, bear or neutral. You can create positions that will work to your advantage in a majority of outcomes, and where you even have a decent chance of knowing the probabilities in advance. I roughly do half of my trading in options (buying and selling), a lot of stock, options on futures, and then futures themselves. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, and demand study and sticking to well-formulated strategies, or else you’re much better off putting it in a mutual fund and walking away.
You can also pay less premium by buying deep in the money, which also has higher delta. This allows you to profit off smaller moves and exit the position early, if something changes your mind. I’ve used this strategy many times now: buying deep in the money LEAP calls.
Reminds me of 2005...
Not yet, but I don’t mind losing the nickel.
Italy perhaps?
Do both. Buy a little, wait a little.
Bonds are starting to cost money to hold because they provide less risk than alternatives. If you had a billion dollars and wanted to protect it from a market crash, where would you put it?
I always buy to close, if I can do it for a nickel. My broker charges no fees for a nickel exchange, and it protects me from after-market changes.
With 40 days left, I would also definitely wait. You're already at max loss, so you literally have nothing more to lose. :)
You are enlightened always, but not now.
I pick companies that I want to buy anyway. These are companies I’ve chosen for other reasons, entirely unrelated to options positions. When it’s both a good company, and a good options play, that’s when I sell the contract. I generally spend 20-30 mins in the morning looking through all the companies in my watchlist, to see if a scenario jumps out at me.
I’m one-hand clapping for you.
I usually pick the strike to be at 70% Prob. OTM or greater, knowing that with earnings (and, erh, trade wars) it could go much lower.
Yes, I sold covered calls on most of them.
I'd suggest you create two accounts: one at a brokerage containing $5k, and another where you deposit the rest of the money in a stable but decently performing ETF. The idea behind separating accounts is to create a psychological barrier between the two, otherwise it will be hard to resist the temptation to transfer the money over. You'll know what I mean when you reach that day. :)
Once you can achieve better returns, percentage-wise, from your $5k than from your ETF, that's when you should consider taking over management of it all. Just keep studying and practicing until you do.
I'm currently reading "The Art of Currency Trading: A Professional's Guide to the Foreign Exchange Market". It's not directly about stocks and options, but it has some solid advice in general, and helps with understanding what money is and how markets work and are affected. I'm sure you could find some other great books out there, like "The Intelligent Investor".
I do something similar, and was assigned 3 times last month, <20% of the time.
Ah, I see it now, thank you. Corrected.
Trust your evaluations more, and don't let downswings worry you too much. With very few exceptions, nearly every panic sale in my younger years turned into a huge lost opportunity.
Correct.
Are you asking the Internet if a trade is a good idea? Let that be your answer. :)
The majority of the put contracts that I write are bought back within 1-3 days, since either volatility, time, or the underlying have moved in my favor (and also, I'm not looking for large returns). It's not "watch the graph and click" style day trading, but it's several trades per day. When things don't go in my favor, they sometimes have to wait for a while to close.
AMD is a solid company; earnings will come around again next quarter, offering better premiums. Until then, I'd take advantage of market fluctuation by writing weekly or bi-weekly calls until you can get out at break-even or better. I'm doing the same now, waiting for ZM, SNAP and WORK to show more liveliness.
That is, unless your money could be doing better work for you elsewhere.
Do you like the companies on their own merit? If so, then in your situation (and I've been there a few times now), I switch mentality from Day Trader to Investor. Day Trader me looks at immediate gains/losses, but Investor me sees the equity as a longer-term growth investment, where daily fluctuations in unrealized gains/losses are largely immaterial. It's really two different strategies.
For example, last week I sold puts against NFLX and was hammered. And then hammered again. But hey, I wanted to buy NFLX or I wouldn't have sold the put, and I so settled in for a long autumn. Turns out I only had to wait two days for the rebound, but mentally I was preparing for mid-2020.
Options compromise many variables. In this case, a drop in implied volatility lowered the value of your options. This is the big danger with buying options around earnings. And also why I love to sell them to you. :-)
It depends on my thoughts about the underlying. I'll typically put in a limit sale for a target return and forget about it. If I think the market is really giving the underlying a hard time for no good reason, I may just keep an eye on it to see how much it rebounds, and then buy/sell to close.
Today I hit my target on an AMZN LEAP call but waited too long to see it raise higher. I was trying out a tweak to my strategy, where usually I exit early, but this time tried being patient with a winner. This just reinforced to me that you shouldn't change strategy mid-game. If I had really intended to invest "to hold out for a winner", I would have bought a further expiration.
Welcome. :) And congrats on picking a winner out of the gate!
I would just say, watch out for the siren song of long calls/puts, promising easy profits. When you sell put options against capital, you can win in many directions: up, sideways, little bit down, theta decay, drop in imp vol; but you when go long a call, you really need it to either go up, or for volatility to increase. The potential profits are way bigger, sure, but you're as likely to guess wrong as right.
That's great, I was wondering just the other day if such a summary existed.
If you bought puts at $4, and fit bit is now $3.65, then you have a few options (really, no pun intended):
Tomorrow, sell to close, since these put options are In The Money (ITM).
Wait until August 9 if you think it will continue to go down.
There may be after-market activity today (9 minutes left) or pre-market tomorrow, that could move fitbit back above $4, in which case you can only do the latter. Also, your profit at the moment depends on the price of the options, so I couldn't say without knowing that.
Personally, I would get out early, count it as a good start, and then hit the books before you try again. You'll learn that buying puts/calls with short expiration times is very close to gambling, and is not the surest way to invest your money. If you're going to buy an option, buy it as far out as you can afford, for several reasons. I sometimes buy them in mid-2021 if they're available at a price I'm OK with, and sell them once I reach my profit goal or loss limit.
Also, make sure you know your profit goal and loss limit, and how to achieve them, and how the options works toward both of these. I highly recommend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el10dgDa2Do
Depends on how fast the asset moves, and what range I need to wait out. Certainly never more than 2% in a single trade, preferably much less. But then, I'm not after big gainers unless I see something special.
Granted, you should always have a limit on both sides.
Yes, this. An owned stock that continues to oscillate beneath your strike is a golden goose who lays very small but regular eggs.
Also keep an eye on the "Probability of OTM". If you want only 2 out of 10 positions to be assigned, make trades at 80% Prob. OTM -- which also assumes no surprise news events.
I use the wheel every trading day, and close out early whenever a put or CC reaches 50% profit. I would recommend this strategy for small, consistent income at well-defined risk.
I trade options because they can offer a small, fixed risk. Futures seem riskier to me, since I don't know when the stop loss will take me out, whereas with options I'm purchasing the time window and maximum loss up front.
I like Options Alpha too.
I don't know what your capital situation is, but if you think it will continue to move against you, you could buy shares. This will reduce profits if it starts dropping in price -- or, you sell the puts in that case and hold the shares -- but will soften the blow if it continues moving upward. Then worst case is that it doesn't move for five months and you lose all your time value on top of the 60%.
They’ll only eat their plant-based substitutes, though...
Treat it like any other game: set a goal like making 50% on a given strategy, and then keep track of how many trades it takes before you can make your goal. Then try to reach consistency.
Shooting monsters in a maze isn’t real either, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun! Plus you get some actual skills from your game trading. I haven’t yet needed to vanquish a demon from my home...
You might enjoy: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/optioninvestor/09/equivalent-positions.asp
Based on the equation "C = S + P", you have the equivalence you intuited in your OP.
One key difference is that you can only "ride the stock" until expiration with C, but you could choose to stay in for as long as you want with S + P.
Imagine I told you about a cheap stock that could either double your money by week's end, or with equal likelihood crash to $0 and vanish. Also, the mere passage of time weakens its value, as does any drop of volatility in the market, such as post-earnings.
Would you buy it?
Compute what you would have made investing 3500 in SPY for six months, and then consider if trading options is worthwhile just now.
Better yet, invest what you have left in some ETF, and don’t try options again until you can beat its returns by paper trading your options strategy, consistently, for at least a few months.
What about selling the stock and buying an OTM call? If it drops, buy back in; if it stays neutral, sell the call for what you can and buy back in; if it shoots up, decide if you want to sell the call or exercise.
See https://www.investopedia.com/articles/optioninvestor/09/equivalent-positions.asp for more info.
You can also use a limit sell and pick the ask price. If there are traders out there submitting market orders, you may get a fill from them. Unless I’m in a hurry, this is what I usually do.
I would sell the stock and sell a near the money put, so that I buy in at a discount if it pulls back, and At least make the premium if it ends up going higher. If you think it will continue to go up, just stay in the position and ignore the fluctuations.
Because there is really zero risk there....
I would advise you to stop trading until you never utter words like these again. :)
If this is your response to a newcomer’s questions, please take your attitude elsewhere.
Of the ~100 stocks in my watch list, BYND makes the least sense to me. I want to own it for the company, but anything >$100 is too rich. And I haven’t been able to find a single options trade I’d be happy with.
As a result, I hang back and watch as time and again, it jumps >10% in a single day. It’s like watching kids play outside my window while I’m hard at work.
I would suggest starting out by selling cash secured puts on stocks you want to buy. Don’t think of it as trading options yet, but a fancier kind of LIMIT BUY.
If you get assigned, then once the stock rises back to near your previous strike, sell a covered call a few points above as a fancier kind of LIMIT SELL.
Going through this cycle, pay attention to how your options move and why. Learn about what changes the value of an option, and when is a good time to buy back, and when to hold until expiration. I recommend initially trading weeklies or near expiration options, as the amounts will be smaller and you don’t have to wait so long for expiration.
This is not a get rich quick scheme. You will make small money, with small risk, and it may be several days before you realize those gains. But it’s a fairly safe way to get a feel for options, using a strategy that, at worst, leaves you either owning stock you wanted, or missing out on surprise upside from time to time.
Just don’t over-extend, don’t buy options initially, and avoid complicated spreads that promise high probability small returns but with outsized relative risk. You can branch into those areas after you study the Greeks, and how they relate to market conditions and the news cycle.
Each week I sell many options, on stocks that I would choose to own and hold at almost any price, and I buy back the options to realize profits as quickly as I can. My strategic goal is a fractional portfolio percentage of realized returns each day, and I really don’t try to exceed this (which, as a result, I often do, though unexpectedly). Small and steady is the rule, based on companies I know, like and trust, and thus far this has produced a high enough win rate that trading has been both fun and worthwhile.
Consider for a moment that trolls want to be attacked. Your refutations legitimize him is his followers’ eyes. It’s throwing water on a grease fire.
I’ve also never understood why some feel a moral duty not to block people. Hey, whatever floats your boat.
But there’s also a lot of life out there, and time you spend reading nonsense here is time you’re not using elsewhere. Don’t forget that this isn’t a job.
I trade with CSPs the exact same way, and it works well for me too. When I end up assigned enough that I can’t cover anymore, I switch to covered calls on that inventory. It’s not a big win strategy, but fairly consistent so far.
Whoops, off by an order of magnitude! $750 for 1000 contracts. Thanks for the correction.
No one can stop you from believing anything you want, while being a Bahá'í. It comes down to what you do, and there are only a few laws that every active member must observe. There is no law against believing in ghosts.
In fact, even what people call "God" is a belief of their own making. What makes it "right" is if it propels it us toward an ever deeper relationship with that Unknowable Entity.
I don't what ghosts mean to you, or how it factors into your life choices, but as long as it isn't harming the unity or good name of the Faith, don't let people discourage you. Your own studies into the Holy Writings are what ought form your opinions about the afterlife, and not the knowledge of others.
Isn't 5% quite a bit? If I take a %5 loss, I need a 5.2% gain to get back to even. If I ever have a losing streak, it could quickly become quite difficult to claw one's way back.
I prefer to risk much less per trade, more like 0.25% when buying options (as directional speculation), and mainly selling puts so I end up a stock owner when things go wrong, which I then sell covered calls on (and buy the back) as the market fluctuates under my price target. Strangles and verticals are also good.
Don't forget about the commission fees. At TD Ameritrade (before negotiating prices), execution of this trade would cost you $8.95 execution fee + 1000 * $0.75 contract fee + 1000 * $0.01 bid = $7,712.50.
Options price in the expectations of the market. If anything seems cheap, there's a reason. For a case like this, you're betting on a whole lot of people being wrong.
If you're confident that the underlying will rebound, and you have the capital and patience to wait, then you could sell an ATM/OTM put on TSLA expiring at the end of the week. If TSLA goes up, you made some cash; if it tanks enough, you now own TSLA at a discount to today's prices, and just have to wait.
I did that for NFLX this week, and it discounted the stock enough that the rebound doesn't have to be very much to break even.
The danger with this is that we're not always in a bull market that bounces back so easily. You could be stuck in that issue for months/years, or just end up taking a loss. You never know when that might happen, so just plan accordingly.
Yes, that makes sense, thank you for the explanation.
Thank you for pointing that out.
Please tell me more. I entered trades similar to what he suggested into the Simulated Trades section of TOS, for bullish and bearish stocks, and was basing my assessment on the risk profile in both scenarios. I'd like to hear what you think.
(text removed to avoid giving inaccurate advice)
I think that visually I like the 39 better, although the 27+24 is due to the 27" being an iMac, so I can't really swap it out.
If you meet your awoken self on the road, kill him.
As you look out the window, consider that awareness itself is something we have zero clue about. We don’t even know for sure that others have it. So completely central to our experience, yet it is the least defined thing of all.
Why should one need a greater mystery than this?
Viewing it as something to be gotten back into, is not viewing it at all.
At work they gave us those 39 inch ones. I like it. I use 27+24 at home.
I completely agree that the math and flexibility of options -- plus the ability to make consistent income with measured risk -- makes them a joy to use. So much better than guessing movements on equities. Some days that works great, other days your capital is suddenly frozen for six months to a year as you wait for a market rebound! I like knowing up front what my "escape" amount will be, plus the fact that the options themselves have a market, so I almost never have to wait until expiration.
If you stop naming all the things, if there is no one to tell of these discoveries, what then?
Hey, if you know the risks and accept the outcome, you deserve the reward. :)
Assuming the short leg you sold was initially ATM/OTM, wouldn't buying the new long leg under it -- which is now ITM -- cost much more than the premiums you gained? It sounds like you're creating a synthetic covered call, with the upper long call no longer being needed. Indeed, if I check the risk profile for your scenario in TOS, it goes from:
Before (short call, upper long call):
______
\
---------------
\
\
\_________
After (lower long call, middle short call, upper long call):
/
_______/
/
-------------------
/
_______/
Instead of limiting your downside, as the upper long call was doing before, it has switched to seeking further upside should the underlying cross that strike. So, I'd sell it to cover the cost of the lower.
Once you hit +40%, how about putting in a trailing stop loss at 5%?
If you think you've found relatively easy money, I'd backtest it on issues with similar properties during other bubbles.
There are enough variables at play here that accurately predicting risk is tricky, which is why I'd avoid it: you're not just banking on the price of the underlying, but also that other factors will hold steady over the period -- like your ability to sell calls at a high enough premium regularly. The real risk, I'd say, is that you'll do incredibly well, chalking it up to strategy rather than unrepeatable fortune, which leads you to wager too much the next time around.
These are great questions. On the first one:
Bear in mind that things have been pretty bullish lately, which tends to offer many opportunities to buy back puts at a profit. However, there may soon come a time when things turn bearish, in which case you could pursue a similar strategy selling calls (if IV is high), or buying puts. Also, are you using spreads to protect your downside, or were you hoping for positions in those ETFs at a discount?
Most times you can find opportunities to use all of these strategies. So, rather than thinking that it's the strategy that's winning for you, let it be your consistency, willingness to adapt, and general circumspection.
For example, to your second question, do you know the probability of profit on those trades? Are you OK with the possible outcomes? Usually when I'm buying or selling, puts or calls, I look for a trade that leaves me in a good position for the largest number of scenarios. For example, I like writing puts when I'm bullish on a stock, because I want to own it -- but at a cheaper price -- yet I also want to profit if it keeps going up. I buy close enough to the money in hopes of a fluctuation forcing assignment. If IV goes up with no movement, I just wait. Here my "worst case" is the reduction in buying power until expiration, so I only sell out a month or two. On the other hand, buying calls without a good reason is something I rarely do, since a drop in IV or a drop in the underlying can stall me out, until I'm just wasting time value, leaving me with nothing to show for it in the end but a loss. In such cases, if I really believe in the stock, I'd prefer to buy the security outright and weather the storms.
Buying and selling shouldn't be about the investor, but the market. If you sell when IV is high, and buy when it's low, you take advantage of the market's over-estimations.
I highly recommend watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej_6uiQCjRE, starting at 7:17. He talks about this very point, and how IV can affect buying and selling outcomes.
When selling a covered call, I consider these three things:
Own a stock you _want_ to hold long. For any of my covered stocks, I'd be perfectly happy holding them for years if need be.
Choose a strike price that you want to exit the position at, as firmly as you might consider a LIMIT sell position.
Choose a profit amount that, such that if the stock dips, you buy back the call.
If you do this, there is no remorse. If the stock holds neutral, you get premium; if the stock goes up, you've sold at a price you already wanted to sell at; if the stock drops, you reap profit (small but steady) on the difference.
For stocks that slowly fluctuate under your target price, you can keep repeating this strategy to make money often.
But if you ever find yourself with buyer's remorse, or regretting your choices, then you need to revise your plan, not your position.
I use Gnus quite heavily, and have for 20+ years now.
I might have answered: “When I chase my tail, it runs as fast as I do!”
I wouldn’t say he held his own. Joshu inquired about his ability to hunt (i.e. find) Zen. The monk insists on conventional signs apparent to the intellect. He then concludes by assuming that if the mind cannot find it, it must not be there! The stance of a novice.
Imagine you’re abducted and sold into slavery for the rest of your (now brief) life. What is your relationship to suffering then? Is it still about concepts?
Backbiting is defined by Abdul-Baja as “speaking ill of one who is absent”. It’s doesn’t confine this to true things, or living people, or people you know. Just speaking I’ll, and the damage it causes.
I would think that directly confronting someone falls under different guidelines, because you’re addressing an issue with the person present, and not defaming their character behind their back.
Half of the world has above average intelligence.
Who is Bill Hicks?
You sound like a perfectly normal human being to me. Enjoy the ride.
I wonder if it’s just as hard to practice non-detachment, and if not, why...
And in that journal, I’d draw a picture of a book about Zen.
There are functional distinctions and there are existential distinctions. In one case you get into a fight with your friend because you each see different figures in the clouds...
Your body knows that cheese is better than chalk at dinner time. But it’s all dust in the end.
How could it be that even Emperor Wu of Liang in his grand resplendence and imperial hierarchy could not see what was right in front of his face?
Replace Emperor Wu with the cultivated mind, and his grand resplendence with all its thoughts and theories and hierarchies, and then ask again.
the person may not even realize that they are engaging in self-centered 'teaching', in order to make their way the 'right' way for others.
Interesting, isn’t it.
This is like the good-hearted man who’s so afraid of his own evil that he wrings his hands in anxiety and is never at peace. Which, if you think about that for a moment, is just too ironic.
I love how you always go right to the heart of the matter in your responses.
Observe why “you” are in this stage. When all concepts are gone, this question, this problem is gone.
So why do you place yourself here? Maybe it’s a learned thing, a survival strategy, but it’s just a view of Reality within the scope of what you’re used to seeing. It’s not really there.
What do you know when you’re not telling yourself what you know?
Ah yes, the limits of the human body, I’m well aware. :)
But do you limit selfhood to the scope of your little finger? Or your nation to a single person?
Then why associate Mind with the confines of a single brain? It’s not that you are separate from the mountain, but that you define yourself as what it is separate from the mountain.
How are you the mountain?
Tell me first: how are you not the mountain?
Are you answering with the “you” that you were told you were?
Try changing to a Tramp path:
cd /ssh:user@host:/path
<commands/completion on remote machine>
If you want to know silence, stop talking about it.
I’m a computer scientist, the majority of whose colleagues are areligious or anti-religious. We simply never discuss spirituality.
To me, logic and science address the human-comprehensible subset of existence, while nearly everything that makes life worthwhile — love, friendship, joy, wonder — lies outside this subset. I see our progress in one as potentially serving to enhance the other, with religion offering “the straight path” to refining this connection.
Science is vocabulary, grammar, and the printing press. Spirit is becoming swept up in the story. Religion is a framework for recognizing the intent of that story, since otherwise it lay far beyond our ken.
I don’t have a formal practice. In the eyes of many here my Zen is likely entirely bogus, so I have no real example to offer.
I will give you a question to consider instead: Bodhidharma sat and stared at a wall for nine years. You’ll be sitting and staring at a little wall of glass for many more than that. Is there any difference?
Without meditation, life and my own failings would overwhelm me. You can only hold on to so many things before the weight crushes you. If, in the end, you are nothing special and there is nothing to be gained... well, that was easy.
I know, isn’t it beautiful though? It’s so false it transcends itself and becomes a finger pointing at the human condition.
I’m a programmer.
Ducks don’t avoid water. They avoid drowning.
Ignore the gaslighters, block ewk, and move on with your life.
Of course he should be banned for his behavior, don’t let the warped reality of this sub lead you to question that. The trick is whether you can find the flowers growing in this manure; how in fact they thrive on it.
Finding the truth is not hard. There. Realizing what you’ve found, a bit harder.
Having or not having a staff is in the mind. I’ll smack you with this piece of wood though!
Comes to a forum that abandons dualism, asks if two things can be the same. ;-)
all values across the universe are the exact same
Oh? Do tell.
In case anyone is interested, Org habits was implemented to imitate the behavior of http://sciral.com/consistency/
Your most expansive and eloquent commentary yet. Upon reading it, all the others are instantly comprehended.
I think that one who sees he's suffering, that he has no power to end it, and despairs, is ready to stop being in control. You have to know that the whole thing is ludicrous -- smoke shaped from lies -- until you laugh out loud and realize that you aren't actually suffering: it's your mind, holding you down, causing you pain, saying "take control so I don't feel so bad!". You never needed to put up with it. The monkey was installed without your agreement. Tell a kid that shadows can actually eat people, and he won't sleep right for years.
It’s strange that you say it hides it. I never saw it that way. To me, seeing transactions as “flows” between accounts was the most natural, with positive and negative describing the direction of flow. Debits and credits have never made intuitive sense to me, so I went with what seemed to me to be the most consistent model.
But also note that C++ Ledger isn’t an accounting tool. It’s a very general calculator that can be used for accounting. There are other variants that focus on the accounting use case, like beancount, where perhaps the credit/debit idea would be more immediate.
Tolerance in this instance is an interesting thing to dig into. Not to be corny, but part of the answer may be that line from the matrix: “There is no spoon.” The dog barking isn’t an external reality imposing on your thoughts and emotions; it’s a physical event (pressure waves in the air) causing an internal experience (sound) which is interpreted by a model of the world (dog, owner, sleep, future, etc). Of all these, the model is what’s driving your emotional response. It’s possible to experience the same anxiety just by believing that the dog might start barking, for example. Or by dreaming about it.
Among its other aspects, Zen is great at bringing you face to face with the existence, operation, and unreality of the models we use to interface with life. Emotionally and mentally, we live with a bone box sitting on our shoulders. But it’s we who have accepted this narrative of separation, and thus contrast and opposition.
Maybe the dog is also you.
Good response. Anyone here who isn’t plagued by dog barking should pause before offering wisdom.
My own dog nemesis, it seems, must have perished. It’s been quiet for the past year. But when he was there, I would seek the origin of my discontent. Is it the sound, the disruption, the anxiety of it never ending, my expectation...?
I don’t follow from your explanation why one complexity is better than the other. It seems to depend on what you’re used to.
And this world of seeming that you name, how close is it to reality?
Naming something doesn’t change what it is.
Doesn’t your title pretty much sum up how Zen became a thing? “Look at all these egos and their attachments... oh wait!”
People who want enlightenment in order to feel special will also need to believe it’s rare and difficult to achieve. Otherwise, if even their boring neighbor is already enlightened, they’ll both feel like a dunce for not having seen, and now believe enlightenment to be unsexy and not the magical mystery tour their hopes were set upon.
Maybe the journey is just as long as you think it is.
I would say that "mountain" is a signifier, a symbol standing for an idea.
Initially, "mountains are mountains" identifies the idea with what is referred to. That, over there, _is_ a mountain. Just getting people to let go of this ideational identification is supremely difficult. "What do you mean that's not a tree? obviously it is." (I'm quoting a recent conversation).
When mountains are not mountains, the signifier loses existential value. Now you don't know what the hell that thing over there is. Maybe it's a lake bed that moved long ago.
When mountains are once again mountains the signifier has utility again, but no reality. It just points at something, when the need today is to plan a hiking trip.
I personally don't think Zen is mysterious or esoteric at all. What's esoteric is how we name everything in the world, and then give those names power over our capacity to think and see and feel. Any perceived complexity, or difficulty, or "skill", is like a person who's made a huge knot out of a piece of string, and then must untie it.
This looks like great stuff, /u/isovector!
Somewhere, a couple named Sam and Sara are being googled.
When focusing on the present is a matter of willing yourself away from all that is not present (and hence, only mind), I totally agree. And when this is not the case, there’s no “present” one has to focus on.
Basically my mind is me trolling myself.
It's taken me a while to respond. I've thought over your question for some time now, but am afraid there is no answer to give.
It is just what is before you. Yet the problem with ideas is that every term carries a host of negations hidden within it. If I say "the present", your mind conjures up "not present" to compare it with, in order to understand. If I say "here", it gives birth to "not there". This inverse image -- the contrast, the context -- is purely mind. It's why, when we look at a book, we don't also see kindling, or a doorstop or a frisbee. Seeking to know "book", the rest is blotted out. Only the name without negation is true, but owing to how human language and thinking work, mind can't know that name.
It doesn't mean we can't break through, though. Even if some dislike the term "faith", there is a power we have to step across the bridge, not only despite our limitations, but enriched by them. Like a thirsty one letting go and falling into a clear river.
I’ve felt the same.
There’s no refusal, Emacs’s current IO mode just makes it difficult, similarly to how we can’t distinguish stdout and stderr in the output stream. Emacs only works with buffers, not file handles.
There have been proposals to add file handles, which would make parity with other shells easy to do. But they come with their own caveats, such as resource lifetime.
I tried to “desugar” input redirection into cat|, but I forget now why that didn’t work out. But as the Internet says, patches are welcome!
Glad to hear it. The last time I used eshell for heavy piping was maybe around 2002, so perhaps things have improved in the meanwhile!
Hi, me!
Most excellent. My last supply of Bi Luo Chun was just ending, so I ordered a 1/4 kilo from them, thank you!
Then trolls are...
Rumi, Attar, Hafiz are good for poetry and allegories. Ibn-i-`Arabi for discourse and philosophy. Khayyam and Rabia for more iconoclastic stuff.
I see Zen relevant bits a lot, but don’t expect those conjunctions are always obvious.
I never upgraded to 9.x, and have been using 8.x for many years now.
You may find this article on textual variations in the Bible interesting: https://carm.org/KJVO/what-is-a-textual-variant
As this Christian writer indicates, the lack of textual accuracy does not prevent retention of the intended message. The Word of God is not only the scriptural text.
This silence, this moment, every moment, if it's genuinely inside you, brings what you need. There's nothing to believe. Only when I stopped believing in myself did I come into this beauty. Sit quietly, and listen for a voice that will say, 'Be more silent.' Die and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign that you've died. Your old life was a frantic running from silence. Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. — Rumi
Do you have any particular likes/dislikes? There’s a ton of stuff out there, and I wouldn’t want to just throw a wall of text your way.
I thought you might also enjoy this passage from an ancient Sufi text, where the Simurgh is used as a symbol of Reality:
It was in China, late one moonless night,
The Simorgh first appeared to mortal sight --
He let a feather float down through the air,
And rumours of its fame spread everywhere;
Throughout the world men separately conceived.
An image of its shape, and all believed
Their private fantasies uniquely true!
(In China still this feather is on view,
Whence comes the saying you have heard, no
doubt, ‘Seek knowledge, unto China seek it out.’)
If this same feather had not floated down,
The world would not be filled with His renown --
It is a sign of Him, and in each heart
There lies this feather’s hidden counterpart.
But since no words suffice, what use are mine
To represent or to describe this sign?
Whoever wishes to explore the Way,
Let him set out -- what more is there to say?”
Is the eye the gate of sight, through which all light flows and is not barred from entering, though itself cannot be witnessed?
Is awareness like that sight?
Sometimes I wonder if we don't turn to it as an extension of what we did as infants: When the world ran counter to our needs, we embraced a deep dissatisfaction that made itself known to our parents, and (usually) they fixed it. Since this strategy worked so well, I think we may have just continued it, railing against an "unfair" existence in the hopes Reality would make our problems just go away. Just as our parents responded to our suffering and fixed it, we then internalized the principle.
Philosophy too. What you describe reminds me so much of Plato’s “divine spark” idea too.
I hope you get well soon. Illness is no fun at all -- no matter the transience of perception!
The understanding I've shared is not mine, but something I've sought to fathom most of my life now. The inhabitants of r|zen seem generally allergic to religion, so I avoid speaking of such things here, but since you asked the question, consider this my indication. And there is far more down this rabbit hole.
And when this stage of the journey is completed and the wayfarer hath soared beyond this lofty station, he entereth the City of Divine Unity, and the garden of oneness, and the court of detachment. In this plane the seeker casteth away all signs, allusions, veils, and words, and beholdeth all things with an eye illumined by the effulgent lights which God Himself hath shed upon him. In his journey he seeth all differences return to a single word and all allusions culminate in a single point. Unto this beareth witness he who sailed upon the ark of fire and followed the inmost path to the pinnacle of glory in the realm of immortality: "Knowledge is one point, which the foolish have multiplied." This is the station that hath been alluded to in the tradition: "I am He, Himself, and He is I, Myself, except that I am that I am, and He is that He is."
And these two verses, which actually led me to this forum, to help approach the meaning of awareness without self:
How can a true lover continue to exist when once the effulgent glories of the Beloved are revealed? How can the shadow endure when once the sun hath shone forth? How can a devoted heart have any being before the existence of the Object of its devotion? Nay, by the One in Whose hand is my soul! In this station, the seeker's complete surrender and utter effacement before his Creator will be such that, were he to search the East and the West, and traverse land, sea, mountain and plain, he would find no trace of his own self or of any other soul.
This is the plane whereon the vestiges of all things are destroyed in the traveler, and on the horizon of eternity the Divine Face riseth out of the darkness, and the meaning of "All on the earth shall pass away, but the face of thy Lord...." is made manifest.
These were all written by Bahá'u'lláh, around the late 1850s. He indicates a direct connection between this and what animated the Buddha's awakening, though I don't expect much sympathy to that view here. Yet, how do we know the Zen writings have any truth either? You put such things to use, and see what results. The tree is known by its fruits.
Why start a discussion about it though? The mods can't remove people who were mods before them -- only after. And they already know they can do that.
Until the attribution, I could have sworn this was from an Infocom text adventure.
I agree completely. Insight should lead to seeing that all arise from the same source. Even if differences appear, we are like cells of one body, leaves of one tree, or the waves of the same ocean.
To that end, seeing another person directly should cause you to feel their joy and sorrow as your own. Even if one is free from the cycle of birth and death (of the ever-varying self), your compassion would be keener, not less.
When some look down on others, or disregard them, I doubt their veracity. Even when I treat your ideas of the world as so many straw dogs waiting for the flame, your heart is as mine, beating in another chest.
There is the object-as-it-is, and the object-as-perceived. The second object and the subject are one. The first is independent, which explains why “all is One” won’t stop you from getting hit by a bus.
Zen brushes away the false reality of the object-as-perceived. Rather than seeing ourselves as a single point of awareness within a sea of perceptions, we come to realize we are all of that experience.
Which leaves the question: what is reality-as-it-is? No conception can answer this question nor anything be said of it. It is the oak tree in the garden; but don’t for a moment think that it’s the “oak tree in the garden”!
So I think there is no such thing as “accurate perception”. There can only be direct experience. Perception is like slicing an orange: although cutting it reveals something about the orange, no amount of cutting represents the whole orange.
I see you as a spot of warmth, sometimes burning the fingers like an intemperate flame, sometimes guiding the way, always a constant point within the cold.
I agree that I only know of your image within my perceptions of you. Through that image I say again, hello.
Just to see the gprof file that results from your slow report. Thanks!
Identity is a newtype wrapper, so it should have no runtime cost, ever since https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/coercible.pdf — which was around 8.0 I believe?
Living with what is can take a lot less energy than not living with what isn’t.
Within a minute of measured time, how many moments are there?
Did you just say 4 things 1 time, 2 things 2 times, or 1 thing 4 times?
Nicely succinct summary.
Nice.
Tomorrow’s hope, yesterday’s lament: author of time, namer of shadows, that one cloud that looks like a horse.
We have to draw the line somewhere if we're going to get anywhere.
I’d say you’ve struck gold in this sentence: Drawing a line is the very essence of duality, that we feel it absolutely justified for the sake of utility.
Except that “metal” — in the way we think of it — is already somewhat bogus.Imagine almost any property you associate with metals, and there is a metal without that property. The only thing they all have in common is a certain mobility of electrons, a trait once again beneath the realm of direct observation.
The metal you’re thinking of is in your mind: it is your mind, representing itself as the world. It is an artificial notion (however approximate), whose specious accuracy causes you to miss the universe hiding in that little “spoon”.
Split the atom’s heart and lo!
within it thou wilt find a sun. — Hatef Isfahani
What is before you when you face it without names or designations or lines? What can you see that is not but an interpretation of sight? That we’re having this discussion at all is already proof of a mystery so great, it hides by its very ubiquity.
That's when it hit me - there IS no spoon! There's just a piece of metal - silver or steel or whatever!
Yes. And there is no metal, just a bunch of atoms. And there are no atoms, just temporally dependent energy fields. And there are no such fields, or time, except in our measurements.
The spoon is taking hold of reality to eat a bowl of cereal. Once the cereal is eaten, instead of putting down the spoon, it can return to the void from whence it came, so we can act as the next moment requires.
A very refreshing contribution, thank you!
So easy! :)
This has been a crazy week so far. Let me see if I can carve out some time tomorrow.
Show me where one color ends, and the next begins, and maybe I'll believe :)
I see, I was tripped up by the wording. I retract the comment, and offer apologies for the distraction, /u/kickypie.
Ah, right, I had forgotten how the author transliterated that term.
From Arabic: شَؾْء خُلُود (shay' khulūd), which means "a thing of eternity"
I read them. There's a shocking number of oblique references to Islam in those books, underneath the Arabic names and terms he used.
Any dissonance rests on our side of the equation. The Way puts it to bed -- but is only "the Way" because of that unrest. Otherwise, if we weren't stirring up the pot, there would only be "that which is". Levels, mysteries, insights... are inside our head, so if you want to talk about Zen, better to use as few words as possible.
I'm over my budget now, so with that I'll say good night and sleep well. :)
I don’t accept the premise of the question as asked, but maybe you could rephrase so I can see better the essential point you’re after?
I loved that movie. Saw it 13 times as a kid. Shayy Hulud!
The Way arises with delusion. The one is not needed without the other. But to equate them...
It’s been the cause of many other things as well, so wouldn’t they deserve equal attention by that logic? Technology is often abused or causes damage, but it doesn’t mean we look at technology only through that lens.
It wasn’t meant as a diversion, just questioning a premise you seemed to assume we all agree with.
Carry on.
Nothing escapes the Dharma, not even lies, as its all One Mind yet again.
Would this mean that delusion is also part of the Way?
This is a rather narrow view of what religion is, and its role in society and culture. If you want to talk about Zen, why compare it with your own ideas about other things? Seems a bit beside the point...
I might have to disagree with you here. “Levels” are as artificial as “colors” in a rainbow.
There’s one reality. It requires no special sight, only a surcease of conception.
If you suspend conceptual thought, what of the AI remains?
"In the ocean he findeth a drop, in a drop he beholdeth the secrets of the sea." -- Bahá'u'lláh
Yes, when the call.wast test is executed, you’ll note that while stack and heap sizes remain usable, the profiling report indicates that >30GB is allocated and freed during the course of evaluation. So we’re constructing and discarding a host of temporaries that aren’t being fused away.
At one point I needed to cover my feet. Sometime later, there was a “shoe” even when I wasn’t using it.
But it’s also a good way to deal with spiders. Why isn’t it a “sipder masher” instead, that I sometimes wear on my feet?
Ipseity, there’s the rub.
Yes, you can create a “host function”, either pure or over the monad of evaluation m (which is left to you to pick), and then import this function into your Wasm module. Items exported from one module may be imported into others, though wiring this up must be done explicitly (see the Wast runner for an example).
There are a few things left to do in this port:
- Port over the floating point arithmetic code from OCaml, re-enable those spectests.
- Implement checking of `assert_fail` from the spectests.
- The evaluator consumes far too much memory; further optimization work needed, especially when recursive evaluation becomes deep.
O! cat.
That it was ever in question is the wonder.
...the way to understanding is a sudden perception that subject and object are one.
I think there's a subtlety here which, when lost, can turn such statements into solipsism.
For example: When looking a tree, there are several aspects involved:
The entity "out there", which I cannot interact with.
The phenonema presented by that entity, such as reflected light.
The receipt of those phenonema by my sensory organs, the eye.
The interpretation of these sensations as brightness, color, form. This is when I start to perceive it!
The mental model used to categorize and filter our interpreted sensations. Here I form the idea of some "entity" associated with my impressions.
The ideal, of which the mental model is an approximation. This is the noetic "tree", for which my impression is an examples. It's a fabrication, but useful.
If the "subject" is the perceiver/interpreter, then the "object" is what begins to appear in #4. Saying that "subject and object are one" is equivalent to saying that since what I perceive are the interpretations of my mind, so everything I perceive is, in a sense, just mind. I neither have access to, nor experience of, anything else.
I believe the error happens when the word "object" is associated with #1.
Correct. If you search for “cofree interpreters”, you’ll find some work that has been done along those lines.
Sure, if you can make an anonymized file, you can encrypt it using my GnuPG public key: http://ftp.newartisans.com/pub/pubkey.asc
I really like this exchange. The first monk was presented by what he thought was a fan, and so he met it as a fan. The second monk was presented by something from reality, and he met it with his current needs.
It could affect it, since we’re relying on GMP for all of the math.
Are you able to build Ledger with profiling there? That would give me a good sense of what’s slowing you down. Several seconds for a few megabytes sounds like a lot.
Metadata should be cheap. What is most expensive are automated transactions. Each one requires a full pass through all transactions parsed afterward.
The Manifestation for Sufis was Muhammad. You can read a little more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufism#Sufi_beliefs_about_Muhammad
There were many sages during the centuries of Sufi thought, but I don't think even Sufis would refer to them as prophets. However, they did seek to become manifestations of the Divine themselves, as a mirror does when fully burnished and oriented toward the sun.
Only when the entirety of self is burned away (faná) does the Divine dwell eternally in the heart of the believer (baqá). Compare with this Hidden Word:
O Son of Man! If thou lovest Me, turn away from thyself; and if thou seekest My pleasure, regard not thine own; that thou mayest die in Me and I may eternally live in thee.
Sure enough, the end of this Hidden word uses these exact terms, faná and baqá.
In fact, these paired concepts recur somewhat often in Bahá'u'lláh's mystical writings, such as the Hidden Words (6 times) and the Seven Valleys (4 times), even in places where their appearance is not obvious from the English translation.
For example, in the Valley of Love he says that the seeker would prefer love's faná to a hundred thousand baqás, so utterly has he given himself to his loved one. This is significant because baqá (in God) should not be sought for its own sake; the Beloved must take priority over all else, including what good may come from His association.
Performance-wise, it was designed to comfortably handle millions of transactions (as in, it would probably take several seconds to process, but not too long). I forget how large my benchmark testing went up to.
If you're generating millions a day, and you want to always be able to run reports on all collected data, then you might hit some limits fairly quickly.
To use the analogy of sight: It's the working of your eye (i.e., blinking, closing the eye lids, looking elsewhere) that can interfere with seeing what's in front of you.
Multiple-cursors!
Religion has both inner and outer aspects. Inwardly they all express the same truth, it is simply renewed. Outwardly it progresses — though really it’s humanity that’s progressing, not the Faith of God. We’re just ready to hear more, and to envision more complex social realities.
Moo
Do any of us approach these matters because they’re easy? ;)
“Seem” is really the key word, in so many things. I read the entire set of threads here, and did not get the same impression of his motives this time.
Unless a person is aggressively using the forum to build themselves up while tearing others down, and cannot hear anything but the sound of their own voice, the one we need to change is ourselves. Isn’t this all about seeing through the fog we’ve clouded over Reality? Isn’t a key part of that fog exactly what we’ve decided to “know” about other people?
I had thought it was about confidence levels initially, until I read https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/1/31/18200497/dunning-kruger-effect-explained-trump
Funny that the Dunning-Krueger arose from a study of such blind spots.
This whole exchange has made me want to give /u/hookdump a hug.
The Ronin and Hookdump I know are but my own mind, taking your words and weaving characters from aether: airy sprites whose arguments and qualities are based on my own experiences and my own proclivities.
Can you fight with your own mind? What does it mean that we try?
Meanwhile the real Ronin, and the real Hookdump, who likely have much in common, are liable never to meet on a medium like this.
You’ve made a lot of posts now looking to right us in our wrong doing. A question that seeks to know is more inviting than a correction.
I don’t ask to criticize, since I think faith is what allows us to hold on to optimism when faced with the degree to which we lack understanding of reality. It’s just refreshing the thought was posted here, if unlikely to find a favorable audience.
Doesn’t that exactly describe faith?
Agreed, Ronin.
I’ve found this to be the case too.
Well received, thank you!
Well, then define "religious".
How do you define “religiosity”?
In the forum I prefer to respect the topic, but I have many interests.
What do you call the moment when you get a joke, and it becomes funny?
There probably isn’t a word for it...
Maybe better that there isn’t.
It seems easy enough to talk about
I think you nailed it right there.
Couldn’t have said it better.
When you were 5, maybe it needed less explaining.
I would have loved Emacs at 7. Playing on a Colecovision at 12 convinced me I wanted to become a computer programmer.
Those are not the thoughts they’ll have, I assure you! It will mostly be, “Who is this new person who’s coming to us, without being asked?!” They’ll be very interested to hear your story.
One thing I find helpful is to contemplate the meaning and purpose of purity and chastity. They are tools for your ascent, and can make the finer susceptibilities stronger and more clear. Approaching it as “conquering lust” is extremely difficult, and tends to just make it seem like you’re only denying yourself; not that you’re opening new doors.
Why would you fear? They’d love to meet you! I’m in the Sacramento area, and can’t think of any scary people... :)
I have no problem believing that *some* scientists say it. Some scientists say just about anything you can imagine. But I'm not aware of an accepted experiment for establishing the identity of a physiology aspect (brain) with a philosophical/psychological one (mind), so it surprised me when you said, "Scientists say..." I was wondering which article I'd missed. :)
Which scientist says this?
Never mind me, clearly I’m not firing on all cylinders right now.
I appreciate the thoughtfulness; much respect. Only now do I see your question:
The substance of the Absolute is inwardly like wood or stone, in that it is motionless, and outwardly like the void, in that it is without bounds or obstructions. It is neither subjective nor objective, has no specific location, is formless, and cannot vanish.
Yes, I really enjoyed those books!
But “motionless” is just another name, that has no meaning unless there is also something in motion.
It is not green nor yellow, and has neither form nor appearance. It does not belong to the categories of things which exist or do not exist, nor can it be thought of in terms of new or old. It is neither long nor short, big nor small, for it transcends all limits, measures, names, traces and comparisons. — Huangbo
I hope we’re giving THEM a good show!
Why are there people who give life to their argument by repeating it?
It doesn’t matter what anyone here thinks about Zen. The world is not watching.
Then save your challenge. Avoid using Zen to build up another image of self.
Perhaps this relates, which has been quoted many times:
The substance of the Absolute is inwardly like wood or stone, in that it is motionless, and outwardly like the void, in that it is without bounds or obstructions. It is neither subjective nor objective, has no specific location, is formless, and cannot vanish. Those who hasten towards it dare not enter, fearing to hurtle down through the void with nothing to cling to or to stay their fall. So they look to the brink and retreat. This refers to all those who seek such a goal through cognition. — Huangbo
Haven’t you read that mind is void? You were nothing from the start.
my grasp of Zen will cut down anyone of lesser understanding
The water splits with great ease, but remains uncut.
What does the IV stand for again?
What if there was no cat?
What if the monks were arguing over the sutras, instead of benefiting from them, so Nansen tore them up. Joshu then showed that discarding even the most common sense things you know is the way to proceed, and to keep the sutras safe.
Would be a challenge to r/Zen’s love of history, to be sure.
Are there people who stick with Zen because they trust that what they cannot see is there? I thought the motivation was mainly being fed up by delusion.
This is wonderful, thank you.
This is great, thank you so much for taking the time!
Analogies can mean anything you want. What if, instead of a ladle, it was a soup eating fish? Then the analogy doesn't work. So why accept your choice of "ladle"? All you've really said -- like others here -- is "you must practice".
I agree. When you use mind to find the "trick", that's pretty much squirming in quicksand.
Let's say you have a habit of interfacing with the world through some conceptual framework, and oddly place yourself as a component within this framework, even though the entirety of it arises from the same place as your concept of identity.
Next, imagine you're trying to make someone aware (a) of the existence of this framework, (b) of how it is used to interface with life, and (c) that it is arbitrarily constructed.
Any work you do in the beginning will have to start out within the framework, because there is nowhere else to start from -- unless the person is uniquely prepared to cast it all aside at once. And whatever you do within the framework is, in a sense, "throw away work". Really what you're doing is peeling away and weakening concepts, and loosening the hold these conceptual thoughts have on consciousness. Meditation, study, etc., can be tools to slow down the hectic bustle of everyday life, and make some of these things more apparent than they'd otherwise be.
For most people (as in, nearly everyone) this process cannot happen instantly. When they see light that indicates to them a perception of "tree", they're convinced that what they see is the same thing as what they understand a tree to be. You end up having to chip away at this false edifice, weakening it, softening them up, giving them a bitter, red pill to gnaw on until the strangehold fades.
Yet the moment you're after is an instantaneous one: discarding the framework. It will happen whenever the person is ready. It doesn't rely on time, or any mental preparation. It can happen in the twinkling of an eye. The main thing, though, is that it doesn't happen this way. Sometimes a person isn't ready to jump into the Void, until you've given them nowhere else to go.
So to your question:
Does enlightenment happen all at once, or does it take time through study and practice
I'd say: Yes.
I wonder if /u/chintokkong could help us here. He's shown some pretty good scholarship in this regard on the forum.
Do you know what is the term in Chinese that’s being translated as “conceptual thought”? Conceptual also relates to “conceived”, as in notions of being that you bring to awareness by mentation rather than experience. I wonder if the original term also has this connotation.
Initial encodings retain all structure in the value, which makes them great for analysis (for example, my parsec-free library turns the parsec API into an initial encoding solely for this reason).
That said, you can use a final encoding to build up the initial value if needed, or vice-versa, so normally you pick whichever one has the properties you care about most (speed, ease of construction/analysis, etc) and translate as necessary.
Impressive! dodging my request by accusing me of dodging. You're better at this sort of wordplay than I am, TheSolarian. Maybe you've even outsmarted yourself...
Perhaps so. I appreciate the turn; you've got me there.
Now tell us -- and show us -- why training is so great. Being repeatedly chided for not doing it has gotten old. Why tell me how stupid and dim and gullible I am? A stupid man won't learn from even the sharpest admonition.
Show us what a trained person can really do.
I'd probably just shrug.
Perhaps you read my words at a... louder volume than I spoke them.
I'm just wondering why we should listen to your repeated claims about training, if this is how we're spoken to by one who has trained.
If he does not answer, he fails to respond to the question. If he does answer, he will lose his life.
Why should he care about responding to the question? Given that one's life is on the line, gesture the fellow to move along and ask the next guy.
If training leads to this sort of attitude toward others, I have to say, you're not selling it.
You’ll find yourself dealing with two very potent issues: the wondrous dimension of new-found physical attraction, and the challenge of finding someone who will be a good partner for decades to come. It’s almost impossible to do both of these things, on your own, at the same time. The latter needs reason, insight, and a level head. The former utterly destroys this.
No one is superhuman, so avoid compromising situations. Talk to friends. Seek the counsel of older folks who might know you both. Study and serve together, and keep your eyes wide open. Little things you see today become much bigger as you see them repeated over decades.
And nothing substitutes for a kind and pure heart over time. Learn how they deal with pressure and hard circumstances. Remember, they want you to see their best side at the beginning, and you’re just as eager to see it. But you need to know them clearly, to discern if there’s real compatibility.
The honesty here is impressive sometimes. Your words remind me of the anger that can follow divorce; potent, long-lasting stuff.
It won’t help to say, but I believe a key may be found in “All is Mind”. Your anger is at your view of this person, what you choose to see and focus on, your understanding of the rightness or wrongness of their actions. Almost certainly they see it differently, or you’d probably be less angry.
Emotions can dissipate instantly if you see things in a new light. The problem is, such a shift can almost never be willed. We strive to change the world to change our minds, as inefficient as that is.
So the anger is a hard reality, staring you in the face. Make it your meditation. Find who is controlling whom, that has taken charge of your emotions. And this other person doesn’t even have to participate! You’ve got an effective copy of them in your mind, and the battle is ready any time.
The farce is sometimes easy to see, but the emotions remain, a fiery, out of control burn. It’s impressive really. How we see things becomes our experience. Becomes so real that we cease to see anything else. A gate with no door.
Why seek to prevail
against waves and wind and sea.
Beneath is ever quiet
and calm.
There is still time for you to come back, but it will take you three or four times as much effort as someone who has intuited the teachings correctly like me. Don't worry, I won't hold it against you, for you know not what you do.
Is it about intuiting the teachings, or direct seeing? You can intuit teachings on lemons to the ends of the earth, as our lovely /u/kaneckt might say, but the crying infant with a rind in his hand will always have you beat.
I don't see you as a troll, at all. More than once you've given me helpful things to ponder.
Did your moment of enlightenment come from the light shining so beautifully, according to some internal narrative, leading to an emotional crescendo triggered by interpreted beauty?
Or when it shut off, and the ruse became clear?
I'm mixed; maybe if you did embrace it, there'd be less to read. :)
I've noticed how much the ewk-clones seem to rage at everything you say here. Funny how there's this arbitrary divide on such a forum. Nansen would be laughing -- though not the cat.
It is all right here, every last bit of it.
Then what is there to be found?
Say more about finding without seeking.
You make a good point. If I meet you on the road and kill you, don’t be dismayed. Will restore you to life soon after.
Personally speaking, I would consult with my Auxiliary board member to discuss possible ways to proceed.
Hope you won't hear this as instruction, since that's not my place. I just love your questions and the spirit in which you ask them; makes it hard not to say what's on my mind.
If you step back from your description, perhaps there's a pattern here. You describe yourself and the monkey mind -- and Zen -- as if there's an epic battle between "you" the protagonist, monkey mind the great foe, Zen your sword, and the need for tremendous skill to achieve victory. Maybe this pattern is the issue, rather than any one of its components.
Speaking for myself, I don't see monkey mind. Not that I don't have what you're describing -- I think we all do -- but that's not what I look at. Instead, I have manure mind. Nearly everything in there is bullshit, which no matter how much I try to shape into something beautiful, the odor eventually reveals the lie.
The answer for me, though, is not to defeat manure mind. How can I make anything clean and pure, when this is my starting point? Rather, I take note of the fact that if I relax and embrace what is, then from time to time beautiful things will grow there. They whither and vanish to be sure, but the less I obstruct this fertility, the more frequently it happens.
I think the quest to achieve perfect mind is an illusion. If instead I see manure mind with the eyes of a farmer, it's a different kind of perfection.
Many people are afraid to empty their minds lest they may plunge into the Void. They do not know that their own Mind is the void. The ignorant eschew phenomena but not thought; the wise eschew thought but not phenomena. — Huangbo
Today you're tall, because the people around you are shorter. Tomorrow you're short, because you're someplace else. So are you tall or short? Are you neither or both? Or is relativity transient, since your definition -- in the context of manyness -- is constantly shifting, even when you yourself remain mostly constant.
Learning to play the piano is all about practice; but if you fail to reach the point of ceasing to ponder about method as you play, there can be no mastery.
Yes, this is what I was aiming for. In medieval times the Islamic philosopher Averroes called this the "necessary existent" (wajíb al-wujúd) as compared to contingent being. And Sufis describe the state of faná as the annihilation of "all things", causing a return to (actually, rediscovery, or Platonic recognition, of) original reality.
Whenever this quandary comes up, I think it’s due to conflating two things: the reality from which things arise (the One), and those arisen things (the Many).
As a somewhat oblique example, long ago I learned the Arabic alphabet. It took many years, but finally I could read it without thinking much. The letter that conveys an “n” sound now feels like that sound, in the way than an English s feels like an s.
But the letter is just a scratch on paper. What is this “n-ness”? How can tiny mark evoke a feeling, a remnant of sound, a unit of meaning?
The alphabetical identity is the part that arises due to my mind. You could say it lives in me. Without anyone who knew the language, it would just be lines and dots on a page.
A good many problems arise from the mismatch between reality and our view of it. Ending this leads to less prejudgement, more thoughtfulness, an open and learning attitude, and recognition of others' points of view. There will still be issues to deal with, to be sure, but instead of too much pre-planning, encounter them as they arise.
Doesn't realization or a better understanding of mind make control of the self easier, enabling more skillful actions within the world, or is this not Zen?
I wonder if this isn't the very opposite of what Zen is about.
When we're young, the whole world is confusing, including ourselves. We resist this onslaught by seeking to "understand" the nature of things around us: finding names for things, affixing labels, dividing up the world into neater and neater compartments.
Having formed this bubble of rational endeavor, we expend enormous energy developing its shape as life progresses. The effort to control and establish who we think we are -- negatively or positively -- becomes an all-consuming activity. We end up living the story that we tell ourselves, as life carries on. Constantly mending cracks in the facade, becoming exaggeratedly sensitive to the flaws and successes noticed by others.
I associate "Zen" with pricking this bubble, and coming to terms with the raw, immediate mystery of life. It is a return to unknowing, and dealing with things without the presumption of knowing them intimately. There is a humility and directness in this, a curious wonder; such that mundanity is no longer the enemy of the future. What is is amazing in that it is. None of us know why, no one can point to the foundation of reality. All we can do is see it, honor it, and cease to labor against it or impress our notions of self upon it.
If we apply the habits of Zen to build a keener, more controlled idea of self, all we've done is convince ourselves that the prison is a resort.
To put it another way: I would hope that Zen leads away from Zen, ultimately. If it's a finger pointing at the moon, witnessing the moon should, at some point, leave the finger be.
It reminds me of the following from the Tao Teh Ching:
THE ancient adepts of the Tao were subtle and
flexible, profound and comprehensive.
Their minds were too deep to be fathomed.Because they are unfathomable,
One can only describe them vaguely by their appearance.Hesitant like one wading a stream in winter;
Timid like one afraid of his neighbours on all sides;
Cautious and courteous like a guest;
Yielding like ice on the point of melting;
Simple like an uncarved block;
Hollow like a cave;
Confused like a muddy pool;
And yet who else could quietly and gradually evolve
from the muddy to the clear?
Who else could slowly but steadily move from the inert
to the living?He who keeps the Tao does not want to be full.
But precisely because he is never full,
He can always remain like a hidden sprout,
And does not rush to early ripening.
Except none of the words in that sentence convey any real meaning... It's just this sort of "specious understanding" that talking and thinking keeps going.
Maybe it's not telling yourself a story about what you're experiencing -- as if it needed narration. We emotionally connect to that story in a way that muddies everything.
What are we, when the connection between remembered events and the present becomes a story we just stop telling.
No update. Just haven't been finding the time to do this.
I’m rather surprised you would think that was me. I assumed you had misread my username.
Hmm? I've never thought you were up to no good.
I think these are some great questions!
If the only thing that can Be always Is, what's the difference of any action?
For a philosophy of "no picking and choosing", why is enlightenment good and delusion bad?
What does it matter if I'm deluded? We can't escape Reality. So what does it matter if I suffer?
What, really, can awareness add, if there are no distinctions, nor anything special?
They're just different enough that it gets confusing. Better to have your own amounts always with a commodity, and use plain integers only for multiplying and dividing.
Not saying your answer is right or wrong: maybe there's more.
After a wave has moved ten feet, is it the same, or different?
This can happen due to a cognitive bias: someone/culture suggests that you see something, so you look for that thing, which reinforces the bias so you see it even more the next time, etc. It can spiral into a such a strong belief that even rational contemplation doesn’t stop the reactions.
You see that it’s happening, which is great. Step out of your comfort zone and share experiences with these other people. Every group is equally human: the good and the bad. Bias only takes root in the absence of broad experience, in the soil of hearsay and mental projections.
when feeling takes place, wisdom is shut out
This was enough for now. Thank you.
My understanding is deteriorating quickly. I really just know two things: that there is this awareness, and it's interesting.
The other day I wondered about the idea of a semi-consistent "entity" that accrues around this awareness, somehow durable through time and affected by what occurs. Call it "me". Where did that come from? What evidence is there for its being? Is it only there because I say it is?
When this thought hit me, it felt like the bed had fallen away underneath, and the whole day was very different, very strange. I really don't understand how or why emotions work; why some words bring up anger or pain or exultation; where boredom comes from; why I have the desires that I do. Being a sentient entity is mostly confusing, really.
I enjoy our exchanges back and forth.
What happens when one decides to dive in and fully immerse themselves into Zen?
If Zen serves to prick the bubble that is this "one", what could diving in mean? The very act of stepping upon the Path enshrines the Path, creating a journey you now must spend so much time unraveling.
But how else to begin. It's cute to say, "There's nowhere to go, you're already arrived", but this can't be understood by a mind that wishes to understand.
As if a bubble dove under the sea to find the mystery of water, but was always frustrated by seeming just out of reach. As is, he'll never find it; but then, there's no finding needed, really. The seeker is the distance.
People kill themselves for all sorts of reasons though I think it comes down to pain.
There's too much armchair psychology in this channel. Life is complex, people. Seek answers from many sources, and please, include a few professional ones when the consequences are permanent.
We take our tiny light into the void, trying to find our way. But suddenly it is snuffed out and the void returns, with no impression left upon it.
My weapon was time, but it was felled by the eternal moment.
"Elimination of illusion" is setting up a target to aim yourself at, giving the impression of a divide. If there were no conceptual thinking, there'd be no "illusion" to conquer either.
You don’t need to detach from wanting enlightenment. You need to see what it is that’s making this a thing at all. You have a seeker, a goal, a moral way to reach the goal, and a necessary attitude toward both. Where did all this nonsense come from?
Disney’s next princess movie: Really Neither Hot Nor Cold.
Ordinary life is the way. Posting is ordinary. QED.
No sensor, nor sensed. It's the only thing in the room. It is the room as experienced. Delusion creates the drama that appears to need resolution. It's fascinating that this happens, and how the emotions are tied to it.
The mind is an eager reality builder. We want to know that the world outside our door is “there” and how it feels and what it contains and what hopes and fears it will bring. Cue the inner dialog that constantly shapes the flavor of our life, some wanting to be the hero, others the villain.
If there suddenly was no more world outside my door, would it be different, right now, from not looking? Schrödinger’s Frogplant.
What’s before us, prior to “placement” is the only real thing we’ll know-not-know. And it’s always been like this, despite the emotional rollercoaster I force myself to ride.
What I find depressing is when a person thinks this realization is the end. That from here you just eat and sleep until death takes you. But who wakes up only to stay in bed? That Reality is a perfect mystery to the mind is only a start! How do we live in mystery (and this is where I think it gets mystical) and not through definition and dialog?
And all the time I would go away with a feeling that I'm just pretending.
You can't pretend to be you. Sometimes you're a you who is pretending, but even then you can't escape what you are.
Reality isn't something you can be or not be. Such possibilities are just images. What you're after is what you can't escape from: the hand grasping at the idea of a hand.
Since I sometimes work myself into a state over things that turn out to be untrue (insert frog-plant here), it should be equally immersive to choose to feel what I'd feel if I were riding a dragon right now. How is that any less real than the reality I thought was true but wasn't?
In other words: The capacity to self-delude is really something. What's even more remarkable is how fickle it is. Why should it be tied to what I think is true, causing people to go to great lengths to trick themselves just to feel the feelings that come from delusion?
Do you mean like someone applying years of their life to search for a Thing they don't understand -- until they do -- based on the word of Masters they find inscrutable?
A fine blade is an extension of the swordsman’s will.
The swordsman is not an extension of the blade.
One who has been broken knows compassion for the struggle of us all.
The SEK can even appear before or after, separated by a space or not.
Unfortunately it's not translated yet, but there's a prayer from `Abdu'l-Bahá containing a line that reads (roughly):
If only you knew how kind was the heart of `Abdu'l-Bahá, cheer and gladness would cause you to take flight, and raise such a cry of joy as to reach the very heavens.
اگر بدانی که قلب عبدالبهاء
چه قَدر مهربان است
البتّه از شِدَّتِ فَرَح و سُرور پَرواز نمائی
و فَريادِ واطوبىٰ به اُوجِ آسمان رِسانی.
This prayer also talks about the kindness of God, with the implication (my reading, of course) that `Abdu'l-Bahá's kindness is but a glimmer of a reflection.
I think that habits are only meant to be displayed using the agenda. There it will provide a sort of "heat map" to show which habits you've been consistent at, and which you haven't been.
Meditation is a great example of a habit task, since it doesn't matter so much whether you meditate on a given day or not, but that you keep up with the habit over time.
That's well thought out, thank you for writing it up. I'd never thought of that sort of use for commodities!
A book or a class cannot, in themselves, fundamentally change your perspective. That's really more about you, how open you are, and what sort of triggers you need. Could be either one will do the trick; could be they both make it worse.
Asking someone who is better experienced can be helpful, because they'll sense where you're at, and what you might need for a "push". But since Reddit doesn't let us know you very well, be wary of advice coming from r/Zen. ;)
Apparently it's done by enabling magit-diff-refine-hunk.
Here is the Org file I was using: http://ftp.newartisans.com/pub/magit.org
Those who see worldly life as an obstacle to Dharma see no Dharma in everyday actions. They have not yet discovered that there are no everyday actions outside of Dharma. — Dogen
Thanks so much for your kind wrrds. :)
Wouldn't it be odd for them to discourse on the duality of mind?
My current favorite is "bi luo chun", a Chinese green tea. I've been having it daily for a little over a month now. It has a wonderful flavor with a little bit of honey.
This is very cool!
Solipsism is best addressed by the application of a wet salmon across the face.
Let your concept of the world stop. It isn’t right, it isn’t wrong. Understanding implies you’d find the right idea somehow.
Back when you were a toddler you met the world. It’s still the same world. The sun changes in appearance, but it never changes.
Nothing to win, nothing to lose. Go drink some water again for the first time.
I sometimes think fear and desire create the Way, like opposites arising together.
Acting is doing what you need to do. Attachment is repeating it over and over in the mind.
I liked this, thanks for sharing it.
You aren’t just the clown. All is Mind. You’re also the context in which the clown is judged: Judge, court, law, and principle. It’s not a puzzle to be solved or resolved, conquered or passed through. You simply can’t lose when you’re the player, the board and the rules.
Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure.” ― H.L. Mencken
Glad to hear it! Even if waking isn’t measured by how few dreams you’re having. ;)
I watched a kitten on YouTube the other day who had found a mirror. He made himself as big as he could, but the other cat matched him exactly. He rushed up, but his opponent answered the charge. He ran off and crept back, hoping for surprise, but there was the other each time. So much energy and emotion! Such frustration!
When the water clears for a moment
and the moon shines back
the kitten strikes again.
I hear you, WR. Let’s burn some concepts and keep warm for a moment.
Nice!
Try this: “You accepting you” gives credence to a rift that isn’t there.
If I dream a tiger is chasing me, should I try to make peace with it, or wake up?
Right you are! Thanks for the clarity, sclv.
The monk showed his appreciation of the universality of Buddha’s manifestations, and got tested by the slap of a hand on his face. Was he still smiling then? If not, start with something simpler before jumping to toilet conclusions.
Don’t cut the cat until your sword can also mend it.
In Haskell terms, the category whose arrows are a -> Maybe b has as its Cartesian product the type Either a (Either b (a, b)), more popularly known as These a b.
A proof of this, generalized over Set(oid)s, can be found here: https://github.com/jwiegley/category-theory/blob/master/Instance/Sets/Part.v
Interestingly, this axiom defines the Cartesian product for the category of partial functions...
9yrs on reddit, only 2 in r|zen
Just had my 9yr birthday.
Zen Masters trust that mind is an illusion...
Why would they have to trust this?
In the desert, do you need to trust that a mirage isn't water?
Ordinary mind, dull mind, sees the world it knows is there.
Zen mind, clever mind, sees the veil of "world" over world, and rips it off in one pull.
Ordinary mind, original mind, sees before naming, before framing experience.
That day you saw your first lizard and didn't know what it was, or how it fit in the scheme of things, so you watched and you forgot your dinner time.
Maybe you could call it something like pilothouse which sort of means helm but doesn’t use the word.
Your OP asked for experiences talking to monks, and Soto monks at that. Someone here responds with openness and this is how you answer?
There's not a whole lot of strategy at the moment, though we welcome people to ask questions in emacs-devel if they want to get started, and there's a CONTRIBUTORS document we will first point them to.
Out of pure curiosity, what ARE the goals of the FSF specifically in regards to the GNU Emacs project?
GNU Emacs is a flagship example of "free software" (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html), and all its design decisions must take this into account. If a certain technology favors a closed ecosystem, or a privileged third-party who might wrest control of the platform from users, it simply can't be considered. Emacs must remain entirely free, and unencumbered; it demonstrates that a large software project can take this stance and succeed through the efforts of those who care about these freedoms.
I have no opinion on whether Emacs development should or shouldn't be in Rust. I remember the late 90s when some people wanted everything to be rewritten in Java. Let's see how much excitement there is in a few years, or if Mozilla stops supporting the language.
What's most important to me is: how many active supppoters would a Rust port attract? What kind of culture would it create? How inviting would it be to a new generation of developers who want to continue the tradition that Emacs began (first in TECO, then in C).
If the answer to these questions serve the goals of the FSF better than a C implementation, then why not?
The match creates the shadows that it chases away. It also blinds the eye that seeks at the same time it offers to promote vision.
Like using a match to engage in shadow removal.
Let your eyes adapt.
Definitely The Matrix. Also the Broken God trilogy by David Zindell.
IMAP (from fastmail.com), fetchmail, dovecot, SIEVE, Gnus, msmtp, gnupg, gnus-harvest for contacts
Took 100x too much work to setup, given all it does is show me slightly longer informational messages than an SMS. But it works.
I wonder if Joshu isn't using this poem both to poke at his fellow monks, and to seek someone worth dueling. If I may venture a playful interpretation:
Meal time. The fourth hour of the day.
Everybody's in the hall now, expecting their "Zen".
Aimlessly working to kindle a fire and gazing at it from all sides.
I try to stoke the fire, but these students are so much wet wood.
Cakes and cookies ran out last year,
The eager ones, wanting to know, have learned too much. Now they're dullards like the rest.
Thinking of them today and vacantly swallowing my saliva.
No one even worth spitting on here.
Seldom having things together, incessantly sighing,
I show them the way -- be fed up with "wisdom"! -- but who pays any attention?
Among the many people there are no good men.
Not a worthy among them; too understanding, too still.
Those who come here just ask to have a cup of tea,
They just want to come, and hear the Word, and be fulfilled.
Not getting any they go off spluttering in anger.
But that's not it, and they don't like it. If only they'd drink more of that cup.
Maybe you're emphasizing “instant” too much?
Understanding a new math abstraction also turns on an instant — seeing it is not a gradual thing. Yet everyone must go through the work of preparing the mind to see: clearing away misconceptions, working through examples of the concept, etc. It’s instant, but requires a lot of work (and time) to receive that moment.
That’s nihilism, not Zen.
As Joshu put it, it’s the oak tree in the garden. It has little to do with constructs like “everything” and “nothing” — neither of which any human being has ever had a direct experience of.
Say what you will, but Ronin sure kept the conversations rolling.
Delicious!!
Nom nom nom.
Zen Masters didn't teach levels, or shape views. They did teach that if it's something that can be attained (worked to in your words), it can be unattained, so nothing attained is the family treasure.
This is a very good point to clarify, thanks.
If it stays in the imagination, then yes, I agree it's fantasy also.
A dreamer can dream of the waking world all he wants, even accurately so, but remain asleep.
I think the former is just fantasy. Is reality affected in any way by how you conceive it?
Likewise, while the second may be more “true” — as far as any analogy can be — it doesn’t mean our mental construction of it is Truth. It has to be directly seen. If you can treat someone else, an enemy even, as if they were another form of You, this is the beginning. And when it arises from a fundamental perception, and not forced action or mimickry, then you’re cooking with gas.
I think (1) is just solipsism. (2) is like the waves of an ocean. They are many, but there is only One.
It may seem frustrating, but this question is the fruitful path. Why do you think there is a "perfect" and an "imperfect"? Who is the "seer", and how is it separate from that imperfect thing? Who are the players, and what is the game?
You sense that you're stuck on a treadmill, and maybe want to get off. What do you do when you discover that you ARE both treadmill and runner?
Liberate from the idea of a perfected thing. Discover the seer of the imperfect.
My wife and I mainly stopped buying meat, though we still eat it at restaurants. I do notice feeling "lighter" after meals based on vegetable protein.
I appreciate you sharing your suffering, and asking openly about it. Chronic nausea is so hard; it saps your will to do most anything else. When nausea overcomes me, I use sleep to pass the time as quickly as possible. Imagining it might not end is scary.
The Zen view? I wonder what that is. But here's a thought:
You're placing yourself in a context: "here", "now", "nauseated". You're doing this. It locates "you" in a position that is difficult to escape from, because you're both jailer and jailed.
Your body is averse to the situation, that's a biological fact. Any animal will agree, that shit needs to stop. How? I don't know; there are medicines. But you also may be magnifying your perception of it, bending the lens of consciousness so it turns on this moment, this time, this period of suffering.
I'm sure you have more than this feeling happening. What about the rest of it? Be more than a single point on a timeline. After all, it could still be so much worse. See what it's not, in addition to what it is; see the end in the beginning. If all is Mind, there is no line to draw, only the lines that come and go.
The changing of Saul to Paul is mentioned in one of the Gospels, though it’s interesting to note that Paul never refers to himself as having been Saul, or that he changed his name.
Why is it zen to focus on what is or isn't zen...
It isn't. It really isn't.
Fare well, if you can leave what you never entered. :)
how do I see things as empty?
As an example: If you see how little you know, and how what you do know is mainly a limited perspective on a larger whole, your mind will become empty, always open, learning and curious. This condition is far more real than the man who thinks he "already knows", whose mind has begun to die.
Use what works for you. There is no should.
I'd say it's more a place of potential: not reached, but discovered. A painting in the dark meets the light.
I have a feeling you can extend this idea: You're manipulating the "shape" of a construction in one parameter, to create a "view" on the other parameter.
Anyone who takes up an art uses practice to find the place where they transcend all practice.
The way you say it sounds like "you" are an observer of "your mind". Is the discord what's tiring you out?
The existence of time and its progression: also mind?
I've been encouraged to tough it out and remain true to how I think people should argue. Basically, show them my version of Zen and why its better.
I think this is a great approach. You can't relieve the darkness just by pointing it out.
Reminds me of a statement from the Qur'án:
And you will see the mountains and think them solid, but they shall pass away as the passing away of the clouds. [27:88]
Well, can you point out something that isn't Buddha?
If not, then, isn't where your mind currently is, what it's focused on, also Buddha?
That very spot is your liberation. You can completely rest there.
The commentary should have rested there too. This is enough.
Do it here in California and you'll get a ticket. A not cheap ticket.
To add to the pondering: Does "time" exist apart from perception and physical equations? How does the picture change, without time to frame and bound?
I'm likely very ignorant here but this place doesn't seem very "zen" (whatever that is) you know? More like a bunch of people with anger issues pretending they know better than anyone else.
I won't pretend this isn't an incredibly accurate, spot-on assessment of what's going on here. There's really no deeper wisdom at work, or excuse for much of the behavior you see.
But consider what Zen's about: perceiving what is, directly; not what you want things to be, or think they should be. In a way, this forum is a living challenge. Can you approach it as it is, apart from any idea of how a Zen forum should be (which most likely is incredibly far from this reality)?
Sometimes what's real is gold, sometimes it's dirt. We aren't gold diggers here, nor are we pigs rolling in the muck. We're both, we're neither, and however strange it gets, that's sort of the point.
Should be alphabetic. At least, it is if you use initsplit.el.
Must they be reconciled? How did that need come about?
Grist for the mill, surely. Until then, sharpen both sides of your sword. It’s two (sides), and it’s one (sword).
Yes. Version it. No cons.
Is the understanding of a new monk the same as a Zen master?
Sometimes you reject all distinctions (not even allowing preferences, mind you! and leading to horrible picnics), and sometimes you insist on them. Resolve this!
Like this?
If you can only rid yourselves of conceptual thought, you will have accomplished everything. But if you students of the Way do not rid yourselves of conceptual thought in a flash, even though you strive for aeon after aeon, you will never accomplish it. — Huangbo
I see what you did there. ;)
"That which is before you is it." :)
Just about three decades now.
Any step I take returns me back. A mile, a thousand miles: one foot after the other.
Then again, traffic jams are my favorite place to encounter self. :) A giant soul mirror.
Your question makes me think of this quote from Black Elk Speaks:
Afterward I learned that it was Pahuska who had led his soldiers into the Black Hills that summer to see what he could find. He had no right to go in there, because all that country was ours. Also the Wasichus [people of European descent] had made a treaty with Red Cloud (1868) that said it would be ours as long as grass should grow and water flow. Later I learned too that Pahuska had found there much of the yellow metal that makes the Wasichus crazy; and that is what made the bad trouble, just as it did before, when the hundred were rubbed out.
Our people knew there was yellow metal in little chunks up there; but they did not bother with it, because it was not good for anything.
People treat their ideas of happiness as they do gold, not seeing that it also defines sadness, which comes in even greater measure because of the rarity of happiness.
Zen is the mind that wonders what this yellow metal is that drives people crazy. It’s neither simple nor complex; it doesn’t say it has no value (since it’s not a question of value) and it doesn’t say to avoid gold (which presumes it has value to be avoided). It’s the original mind that sees nothing special, and is surprised at all the to-do. Value is everywhere; value is nowhere. What’s the difference?
I first heard this joke about 27 years ago, so you’re in good company. :)
The city lives exactly because you’re there to be a part of it, but nature doesn’t care if you observe or not; it just carries on.
God is yet another wrrd for that stuff we can't articulate.
Nicely put. There is more in heaven and earth.
Understanding allows you to embrace a thing.
Opening up permits you to be embraced.
As one Ta'i Chi book put it: "Learn to invest in loss."
Step 1: Discover a fascinating, ancient text that claims: to awaken to a true perception of your self, simply “don’t pick and choose”.
Step 2: Pick these books as communicating truth, over all others. In fact, decide that whole categories of books you’ve never read before must be wrong, such as every religious text.
Step 3: Insist that what others understand is Not The Way. You’ve chosen; defend your choice!
Step 4: Retire. You now know everything there is about not picking and choosing.
I trust most that a person understands Zen, who doesn’t need Zen to understand it.
Please forgive any assumptions. I hope you catch that tiger by the tail! :-)
Looking at the self, which at first appears to be a constant entity moving through time, you discover it’s more like a standing wave form. There is no “self” that persists. You are actualized by the water, ever flowing through. What is there to “be” enlightened? Nor does the Ocean ever cease its surge and flow.
The moment you talk about “many and one”, you’re not talking about the one at all.
Don’t build a better mental framework to enclose the case! use the case until the familiar appears strange and incomprehensible.
Say you paint half of a black box white. When exactly did you paint the line between them?
Show me where the timeline is, and I’ll show you my face anywhere along it.
This question gets to the crux of the matter, so there’s not much help my further words could be. Pursue the case! As to the other question, I don’t see any meaning in the order.
If you hold to differences and distinction, you will live and be successful and “the nation” will flourish.
If you abandon discrimination, you pass beyond what is worldly: both literally and figuratively. You fail at living for your “Nirvana”.
How can a follower of the Way thrive without mercantile aspirations? How does one move forward yet dwell in stillness?
Answer, and you employ the many to accost the one. Remain silent and you starve the many to feed the one. How do you respond?
I think the question you ask is really an excellent one, and deserves a deep and heart-felt examination. Far more than the simple notes I could make here.
If it be your wish, O people, to know God and to discover the greatness of His might, look, then, upon Me with Mine own eyes, and not with the eyes of any one besides Me. Ye will, otherwise, be never capable of recognizing Me, though ye ponder My Cause as long as My Kingdom endureth, and meditate upon all created things throughout the eternity of God, the Sovereign Lord of all, the Omnipotent, the Ever-Abiding, the All-Wise. Thus have We manifested the truth of Our Revelation, that haply the people may be roused from their heedlessness, and be of them that understand. — Bahá’u’lláh
I use the defaults. They’re really not bad on Dvorak.
And you’ll have many friends here to call on, when the hour is late and no one else is around to share the joy with. :)
How can "suchness" be realized in this moment...
But how can it not be? What else is there? Where is the second Reality that can be placed side by side with this one?
If the mind stops shouting “la la la” constantly, you won’t have to realize silence.
Yes, this is the essential rub: Does the proposed Manifestation of God have the authority to ordain things that don’t make sense to us, and don’t accord with our reason? That may even cause us great sadness and hardship in this life?
We associate gender and sexual expression with identity and self-fulfillment.
Should we?
Who has what, again? ;-)
At a certain point, this is just moving pieces around on a chess board; but without rules there is no game, and equally no fun. Hope your work day goes well!
The mind-idol gets remade at every moment. Exhausting!
I? Here? I think /u/WanderingRonin77 may be suggesting, “Beware the defilement of purity”.
Break the mind-idol
Afterward you can’t clean it
You can’t neglect it.
We're definitely clever monkeys. I think we turn to thought because it's tractable: within our conceptual limits. This conveys a sense of security, predictability, an ability to avert danger and achieve objectives. And it often works well for these things, though not always.
But relied on too thoroughly, it becomes an apparition all too compelling; like getting so emotionally wrapped up in a movie, you forget you're just being stimulated by light.
We're waves looking for the ocean. It's not "over there", it's not "beyond", it's not any further than the eyes we use to seek it. Giving up its form, the wave falls into the Void, but finds that nothing changes.
I think we create the sense of that beyond by narrowing ourselves to thought, rather than there actually being a “here” and “there”. It’s like hiding your head under a blanket until removing it feels like you’ve discovered something wondrous. Yet if you’d never done that, it would just be “things as they are”. We seek the magical because we’ve confined ourselves to a “mundane” of our own making. Of course we’re eager to escape! Drama is mind. :)
In part, Zen is the awareness that the world of form has no real or inherent meaning...
I wonder if it goes even further than this. Your statement above seems to posit "meaning" as an extra-natural reality, of which forms are deprived, but something Else must necessarily possess.
However, what if meaning is not extricable from forms? For example, I often see on reddit people posing obvious Examples of Truth, like "1 + 1 = 2". Yet there is no meaning in this statement beyond mere definitions. Here's how it goes:
If forall x, x = x;
If 0 = 0, 1 = S 0, 2 = S (S 0)), etc;
If forall n, 0 + n = n, and S m + n = S (m + n);
Then:
1 + 1 = 1 + 1 by meaning of =
= S 0 + S 0 by meaning of 1
= S (0 + S 0) by 2nd meaning of +
= S (S 0) by 1st meaning of +
= 2 by meaning of 2.
There is no "meaning" apart from the logic in which these definitions are made. The "truth" of a statement is identified with every well-defined application of that logic.
So I wonder if the world of forms is the world of meaning, and that meaning, too, is mind. What we're after is what lies beyond the logic of thought, which can never be described or assessed by it. To the mind, it is meaningless. It is nothing more than what is.
When the cases are found, does Zen appear?
I love that this is a quote from an old master. :)
Analogies, how poor they are.
The reality is that you’re standing on a plain of gold, with a golden shovel, looking out through eyes and mind of gold. Dig anywhere, and you should find it. But you see dirt, always dirt, and then this question comes up.
It’s not really that you need to find the right spot to dig, but an experience that jars your vision sideways. What shape that takes is entirely dependent on you, your background, your mental state. Hard to invent that ingredient in your own, though not impossible.
So the digging, in this abused analogy, isn’t for the purpose of finding, but a catalyst for realizing there’s nothing lost. Hone your doubt until the ringing of a stone is enough, and pow, X marks the ever-present spot.
Moving between flycheck errors.
I think of it like digging for gold:
Digging isn’t why there’s gold in the ground.
Dig in the right spot, and you’re done.
Dig in the wrong spot, and a lifetime of work won’t matter.
Never dig, and you’re left to hoping it’s just lying around, waiting.
It’s funny when I mention what goes on here to my wife. She says, “How can that happen in a Zen forum? It’s a Zen forum”, and, “but it’s called ‘Zen Buddhism’...” From the mouths of babes. ;)
r/Zen has co-opted the word “Zen”, but is a melting pot of all sorts. If anyone desires a single view or mode to prevail, their time is better spent elsewhere. But if you like having your sanity challenged, it can be diverting.
Respect!
I think when people ask "what is Zen?", they wonder, "why does Zen exist? what makes it different from anything else?"
It being "a school of Mahayana Buddhism" doesn't explain why people don't just follow Mahayana Buddhism.
Muscle man on the beach
pushing the waves back
needs more power.
Tearing us down — such a common practice here! — does not build you up. You’re laying hands on your own throat.
If you told Huang Po that he held the truth, I wouldn't want to be standing near.
I don't even know why I like this post so much. Well played.
I can't answer for you what Zen is, as I'm certainly not qualified. Instead, just a word about beginnings; something anyone can do, whether they meditate or read or follow a master:
As you look at the world, even what you call "the moment", you're mainly seeing yourself reflected back at you: your definitions, fears, expectations. There is very little of the world in your cognition. Becoming aware of this tiny box that encloses your mind, and how even the words you use -- if you push hard enough -- dissolve away into nonsense: this is where Great Doubt takes hold. It should lead to moments of dizziness, and insecurity.
This isn't a new thing. Socrates pursued it avidly after the Oracle told him he was the wisest man alive. From that point on, much of he did was deconstruct people's certainties about "the world".
Books that talk about "living in the moment" aren't showing you the mind-prison, they're gilding the bars, making the inability to distinguish freedom from imprisonment ever harder, more subtle. In that way, it's absolutely not helpful. Better would be to look at your anger and impatience as you sit in traffic, and chase down its source. Do it earnestly enough, and you might enter into a meditative state by accident, as you listen deeper and deeper to the shape of nonsense that is now.
Prick a soap bubble with a pin, despite all its lovely colors, and what remains? What happened to the bubble? Where did it go? If your answer to these questions goes from "obvious", to an intriguing confusion, there will be more to say.
Great quotes! Thank you very much for taking the time to look these up. I especially like the farming one.
Making a great effort, striving?
Isn’t struggling with cleverness the same puzzle as struggling with buddhahood?
It's just that, the single thing, I'm eager to hear. Mouth-noise falls like too many raindrops.
That red flag in your mouth is flapping again. A steady wind. Now tell me, is it really your mind moving, or have two old monks planted you in the ground to resume their argument?
If you meet a book about Zen, kill the book about Zen.
See how silly the idea of a "No-Gate" is?
There just isn't a gate.
Followed by a long thread of discussion about gates and no-gates...
The no-handle on the no-gate is made from irony.
Or that every crockpot belongs at a picnic. ;)
I heard that some native Americans could not recognize sails on the ships of European explorers. In artistic representations their were no sails. It took the shamans ( authorities) of the tribe to impart knowledge of sails, then they could see them.
https://www.northcoastjournal.com/humboldt/myth-of-the-invisible-ships/Content?oid=2129921
I think using mind as an interface with reality is like a thirsty one seeking to know the Ocean through a straw. Such a minute part of the experience; all it does is make you more thirsty, and leave a bad taste in the mouth.
The answer, of course, isn't a bigger or longer straw. Dive in! Instead of tasting, you feel, you swim, you ken the deeps. Though you still don't know anything, really, does a child need a reason to play?
Perhaps your "doubling up" is becoming aware of the straw? The mental machinery that processes experience, so you can confirm you've really had an experience? This is, after all, the source of "ordinary". Otherwise, whatever's happening right now, I have no name for it. Zen, Void, Mind, Seeing, Buddha, Kensho. My mouth can make many sounds.
And please, no surprises at the picnic. Eat when you’re hungry, sleep when you’re tired.
If I were a betting man, I’d say you hit the nail square on the head.
It’s interesting to me that, because the story says a Zen master approved of the basket, one might take this as a fixed point, and bend one’s self into casuistic knots trying to find a philosophy that makes it OK to bring gas to a fire fight, or excrement to a cookout.
Maybe the koan is messing with you, because the goal isn’t to show you reality, but what’s keeping you from it: these mind foundations plastered on top of the void.
I don’t. My apologies for the criticism, /u/koalazen
Something strikes me as off.. Your presentation posits you and the donkey being two things, for example.
Out on the sea
so many waves
pushing and pulling
why can't I have one?
When I read this, I hear the questioner putting forward his concept of the Buddha -- separate from all other things he knows -- so his question is basically a statement of rejection. When Joshu asks, "What else do you dislike?", he's reflecting back the essence of the questioner's "Buddha".
Maybe recognizable in: No speaking, yet nothing unspoken.
I love how abstract these things can get. So hard to describe what you're thinking. But we can try, and fail, and share in the silliness as we do.
Imagine there were a circle, a plain 2-dimensional space. On that circle was a point, moving this way and that. The point sees itself as a separate entity, and wonders about the vast range of the circle, and why one side is so different from another. The circle, meanwhile, simply regards the point as a locus, a momentary focus, knowing that as it ranges about the circle, it sees many different things; while the circle abides.
In your own life, you dwell at the locus of what could be considered a larger entity. I don't mean large physically, I mean in the way that raindrops, and the umbrella they fall on, are points within a larger space we term "rain". It's natural, in each moment, to see them as separate, and define them independently; but in another sense, there's a common entity that gives them meaning and one can intuit this reality in addition to the points.
There's one scifi book, Quarantine where I feel this idea was nicely touched upon. In that novel, he uses quantum incoherence to express the idea of an "unbounded self", with the "locus" being the state chosen by our will out of many potential eigenstates. Great read.
Anyway, long story short: you hurt when you fall or embarrass yourself because you identify with the one who fell. Living in the locus. I could quote lots of stuff about Mind here, but if you know where I'm headed, I don't need to; and if you don't, I'd just fail louder.
You aim right for the heart! I have no consoling words, and it would be futile to attempt an explanation.
I’ll just ask a counter-question: Is it death that causes us to suffer — in a universe where it is as inevitable as it is unpredictable?
I like this.
Sometimes when you’re talking to someone who’s facing a difficulty, you can perceive (from outside) that 99% of their difficulty lies in how they see the situation, and not the situation itself.
Seeing the ground of these thoughts makes it possible to encounter things as if you’d never known them, weakening the certitude of understanding, and breaking the door of the mind prison, until the mundane becomes transcendental and the transcendental, mundane (since what power do words have to truly describe?).
Then all there is to deal with is what’s in front of you: not the host of ideas who clamor to populate that space.
If a thief steals from people’s homes to show them their security is bad, he doesn’t get to expect an apology from the home owners for getting upset, “because his thievery has a purpose, to keep them accountable for not locking their doors”. Society puts the thief away until he learns this behavior is not acceptable.
I appreciate your willingness to reconcile on behalf of truth, Ronin, but copypasta attacks are not acceptable either. One user does not get to decide the validity of his abuse of the forum; the forum decides, which I’ve seen in all the complaints about copypasta in the New moderator thread. I don’t recall anyone standing up to say they believe it elevates the forum, or promotes the study of Zen.
Until moderation is used to set the tone in this forum, blocking is the only recourse available. It does make it strange to see empty threads with dozens of replies, though.
trying to imagine what was there before the Big Bang
union of subject and object happens in an instant
If subject/object distinction can be so facilely erased, how about now/then distinction? Time is integral with space, so both should be equally Mind. Perhaps my original face is not bound by “when”; time is born from it!
It has become one of my most used editing mods. The key is setting up the right bindings.
You can’t grasp at things, you can’t not grasp at things.... what do you do?
When you predicate existence on their being you and things that are not you, this dilemma cannot be resolved. Your foot and your heart never argue about identity, despite their difference. You’re equally unwilling to cut either of them off, even though one is more expendable!
The problem isn’t in the grasping or not grasping. It’s the idea of things. How can you grasp what you already hold, even though your hand may not be around it? Who can take it away from you, if it also is who you are? And I don’t mean the physical separation, that is obvious. I mean that the thing's very thing-ness arises from Mind. See Huangbo’s example of the Void being unchanged by the cycle of day and night.
You’re not facing an unsolvable problem: you’re accepting the premise that there is a problem at all.
Am I losing the human race?
lost my original face,
raised a finger to bring some Zen,
now just a four-fingered wizard
cold in a blizzard, hot in the sun
too much fun; am I picking and choosing?
came to r/zen for a bruising
ego, laid out, needs time to unwind
mind in a bind, said goodybe to time
mountains are mountains, can't you see?
but ain't no mountains, trick's on me
then in the end I found a beginning
ears ringing, eyes dazed
every day, same in a way
now a sudden breath: a hint of death
want to hear the rest?
don't trust a word, not yet!
but come near, see me grinning?
maybe in this end you'll agree
I'm just beginning.
I use initsplit.el to move them all into a settings.el file.
If I may hazard an analogy:
Lack of faith is like insisting you hear the punchline of a joke, before you allow the joke to be told, because you fear wasting your time.
What we learn through faith is that patient listening sets up the moment of sudden enjoyment, and should be savored as much as the end.
Only by relaxing can your hand grip something other than itself.
Seconded!
Thanks, /u/SoulfulPunk, you’ve made me think about why I like /u/WanderingRonin77 so much, even when his head gets as big as a feisty watermelon.
I think it’s because: if you call him arrogant or egotistical, he’s just going to agree with you. He knows that he’s annoying sometimes, and overbearing sometimes. The only thing he seems to really want is for us to join him in this quest/non-quest for Reality.
I realize he’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but of everyone I’ve seen in this channel, he’s the one I’d most like to drink real tea with — because he’s all there, faults and all. He’s not trying to win a virtue contest, since in the end it has nothing to do with our ultimate purpose: to really know that we arrived the moment we began.
Don’t think I’m suggesting you should like him. Hate away, if you must (just avoid picking and choosing). But do realize he’s done you a service by stirring things up that deserve to be examined. Perhaps he’s more of a friend than you’d think.
Is the source code for this project available anywhere?
A brain cell said to a foot cell: “You’re so ignorant and unenlightened!”
The foot cell replied: “What is this ‘you’?”
Brain cell was greatly awakened.
When a light bulb becomes irritated by shadows, he’s forgotten something.
If you are that Way, what is this talk of entering and not entering? Even if you set black next to white, all you see is your own reflection. Having made a gate of the Gateless, we wear our arms out pulling at the handle!
But since everything goes through our perceptions...
When you finally grasp an abstract concept, something too simple to be explained — which happens in math all the time — which perception does that go through? I don’t mean the particular outward form that may have triggered the realization, but the substance of the understanding itself, which even after years of study may still escape one’s ability to explain.
While looking at a tree, you may “see” something that has no form, and for which the tree was only a catalyst. Like when I read a book, I see the ink and paper, but my sudden grasp of the author’s intent is a wordless thing which afterward I might struggle to convey.
The idea of spiritual resurrection is one of the predominant themes of the Kitáb-i-Íqán. I’d say this idea is profoundly important to Bahá’ís, as it explains the fabric of progressive revelation. We just don’t isolate the meaning of it to Jesus’ life.
I cannot leap clear of the myriad things; I can only hinder and obstruct. I like to steal the voices of the Zen masters, and speak with them to try prove that I know something of Zen. I want to think that I know what the finger of the teachings is pointing at, and I want to believe that I am there already. I was not here, I did not say this...
If I read this with the “I” quoted, it’s really quite spot on.
Great quote to wake up to today.
Note that how this works can be generalized to monoids: scanl mappend mempty. Then, for the case of fibs, you just pick Sum.
So, what happened to the other 11 infinite guys? A shade too finite?
Ah, my fellow companion. You’ve become part of the spirit of this place, in a very good way. What keeps you coming back?
So you’ve thrown your log onto the trash fire. Sit and warm your hands with us for a bit.
I thank you for the warning.
Funny that trying to point at the plainest thing is received as fancy, but I appreciate your directness.
Zen has nothing to offer you. You’re a hungry man, asleep on the banquet table. What you need is a pin to the foot.
It feels like nothing special at all. Wonderfully so.
One wave said to another, “My, you’re tall!” What answer could be given?
What difference is there between a racer and the finish line? What fun is there without the difference?
When seeker and Goal are separated, the Path appears. If you don’t traverse it, it never ends; but as you traverse it, the end recedes.
I like this, thanks.
If you had stopped after the first two sentences, this would have been a truly beautiful reply.
First the water must heat, then it boils. If the thickness of the atmosphere weren’t hanging over it, it would happen instantly.
Is truth about perception?
The matter is found in the mattering.
There is no nihilism.
Did you just jump the shark?
Stop trying not to think of elephants!
The person who tries to move beyond cause and effect has made it into a “thing”, and it becomes impassable. Stop ignoring what is not there. When the water boils, the tea is ready; no need to boil cause, and drink effect.
First sickness: “Where is Void?”
Second sickness: “Ah, so that’s Void!”
As I gaze, up at the night’s sky,
is that the galaxy reflected in my eye?
Let's make a wild fox spirit coat. So soft.
How can there be an internal struggle within one mind? I don't mean the perception of such a struggle. Can someone win against me if I haven't lost?
Find the exact dividing line between anger and calm, and I'll show you a path between them.
Unpack the humor of a joke.
Once a koan commentary exceeds a few words, I feel it’s no longer speaking about the koan, but the author’s struggle with it.
On the other hand, the more meta we become, the better we approximate what our minds are doing to our experience of reality.
I’ve had experiences. Oh wait, I’m still having them.
I heard the response saying, “Why care so much about what is not relevant?” We author our own dramas, and place ourselves in the role of tortured protagonist.
I'm not sure what you mean by "faith", but without doubt you cannot enter the sea, sitting safe in your rowboat. No one approaches the unknown by refining what is known; rather, a moment of abandon.
"It" is where you lost me...
When satisfaction has forgotten its hunger, what is it then?
There's no veneer here, things are what they are: rawness and refinement; aggrandizement and self-doubt. Occasional points of light. Savour the bouquet.
I turned on the light and saw so many colors. At no point later did I try to turn off many lights.
Is the difference between suffering and delight that we want one to end and one to continue?
There is something of a ____ that goes on here that is unnecessarily acrimonious and completely unrelated to Zen. Derogatory comments of this nature appear in nearly every thread. What does that have to do with Zen?
Oh, there's a something indeed. I applaud the matchless irony.
You've posted several times now rebutting the idea that Zen is unrelated to meditation. However, all you're doing is restating (by opposition) the ideas of a vocal minority from this channel.
The fact that some believe there is no link between Zen and meditation doesn't mean you have to believe it, talk about it, or even think about it. Let others say and think what they want; you're in the wrong place for asserting any kind of control.
Zen is this. Zen definitely isn't that.
See the problem?
You make it sound as though Zen is just a lullaby for the mind, but there are lots of ways to accomplish that.
"Okay", "not okay". Let's start there.
A clap arises when one hand strikes against another.
The world arises when thoughts vie with reality.
What is there, without that distinction?
Assume they all are.
Now assume they aren’t.
All done.
When the mind stops telling you stories, you find yourself surprised at the world. It doesn’t need description. It has never needed Zen.
Done artfully: Enzo logic.
Interesting, I see it as affirming inner truths while correcting errors in outward notions. For example, a person may say they worship the Sun, and don't need an intermediary to connect with the Sun. Then Bahá'u'lláh tells them that no one knows the Sun but for the Rays. He doesn't suggest that the believer's relationship is wrong -- either way, he adores the Sun -- but He corrects a misunderstanding that has led to countless, misguided philosophical disputes.
Aside from this, both Sufism, and this aspect of the Bahá'í Writings, speak about transcending the limitations of the logical mind by the transports of love ("teach it the science of the love of God!"), to the end that one may recognize the True Source, and devote both heart and soul.
At first I wasn't necessarily convinced, I just wanted to "see it from the inside", which I did for a few years.
I was finally convinced by the effect on my life that reading and pondering the Writings (particularly the Seven Valleys) had on me. Not something I can ever explain, but why do we do anything? People want to think their decisions are driven by logic and rationality, but how many of the experiences we cherish most concern the fruits of logic and reason?
Ah, that sounds right!
I'm not sure rawzih has any connection to Ridván, since the Arabic root is ra-za-wa, and not ra-wa-za.
Makár is "ma-kár", which is a poetic way of saying "na-kon": don't do it. It only means planting from the context. Similarly, later on you'll find "ma-dár", which is a poetic form of "na-dih": don't give (it up).
Nice article!
This reminds me of a takeaway from Greek philosophy: Real knowledge should be transformative, and real transformation can only be witnessed in behavior.
The wave is powerless to step away from the ocean, and all his substance is borrowed. It doesn't mean he doesn't move about, play and crash, only that he has no existence separate from the sea, and should recognize this when regarding it.
I believe this should work:
(bind-key "M-h" #’some-interactive-function (current-local-map))
Another quote to consider in conjunction, from Summons (para.136):
We, verily, have forbidden you lechery, and not that which is conducive to fidelity.
<Pauses while nibbling on bone>
...
<Returns to bone>
Quick question: Do you let the words of `Abdu'l-Bahá cause you to question your understanding of what "abomination of desolation" even means; or do you let your ideas on what it means cause you to question `Abdu'l-Bahá?
Having read up on this on the Internet, I have no real picture of what the abomination is even referring to, other than the generality's blindness to the station of the Manifestation of God and His friends, indicated by the nearly immediate handing over of the reins of Islám to its spiritual enemies (namely, the Umayyads). This period of time is further connected by `Abdu'l-Bahá with the prophecies concerning the Beast in the Book of Revelation.
But I don't find it concerning that I don't understand what this prophecy refers to. I'm interested in learning more, but too often in history people have come to reject the Manifestations because what They said didn't quite match what people thought They meant. Noah gives a very explicit example of this, since to outward seeming He was flat wrong in the events that He prophesied. Or was He? :-)
Been using Gnus for 25+ years. Tried a few other programs during that time, spent a couple years with Apple Mail, but I keep coming back.
Here's a story I haven't told many people before...
When I was a kid, I hated olives. With a passion. It boggled my mind that any human being could derive pleasure from them, in any way.
Likewise, when I found the Faith, I hated religion. I couldn't say the word "God" without a bad taste in my mouth. I couldn't pray. It took a full year before I could even read the Writings, it was just too awkward and bizarre to me.
Time passed, and one day, while reading Herodotus' History, I became so affected by his absolute raving love of all things olive that I decided to try them again. Peloponnesus green olives. OMG!!!! They were so amazing!! I would buy them by the pound, and eat the entire pound in one sitting while reading chapter after chapter of the History. I put olive oil in my hair, on my skin -- I went olive crazy. Nowadays, olive oil is all I ever put on my salads.
So I asked God: Can you please make prayer be like the olives?
Wanting didn't make it happen. Hoping didn't make it happen. It took decades of thinking and trying and experimenting. There is no silver bullet unless God wills it; but there is a promise: that anyone who makes the effort and is patient will find their answer.
Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? So if you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!
I wouldn't be discouraged if the path feels remote. If anything, you're learning the true nature of the path by pushing through the brambles on the side. The key, I think, is to strive for such patience, that even darkness becomes a lesson about light. Where you are now is the perfect place to learn about honesty, sincerity, purity of heart, and the attributes of a true seeker. One who only thinks they've found, and mimicks all the right actions, has yet to taste the sweetness that follows the bitter cup.
I relate to most of what you've said, as can some of my close Bahá'í friends. I think this is just real life: ups and downs, times when things are clearer, times when they are more obscure.
Once I couldn't say the obligatory prayer for almost a year. It felt too fake to be praying to God from a place of obligation. It took 22 years to resolve this within myself, likely due to upbringing.
It's like a "dark night of the soul", where I seem to be wandering through some wilderness in a daze. You can't invent faith, or will it to appear. I think the essential honesty of our soul drives us away from living a sham life for appearances. We only have so much energy before we return to where we're really at, spiritually.
The only constant in all of this, the unbreakable cord, if you will, was to hold on to my most favorite selections from Bahá'u'lláh. In fact, my last funk was finally dispelled by savoring the syllables of this quote:
O Son of Love! Thou art but one step away from the glorious heights above and from the celestial tree of love. Take thou one pace and with the next advance into the immortal realm and enter the pavilion of eternity. Give ear then to that which hath been revealed by the pen of glory.
Going back to the heart connection with the Source, that is what brought everything else back into perspective. It's not about the laws, or the religion, or the teaching or not teaching: it is about nearness to God. Once that goal is firmly fixed, the rest becomes a means to that end, on both a personal and a global scale. But imperfectly so, since we're growing and learning.
I can't say much more than that. Find Bahá'u'lláh in your heart of hearts, and blind your eyes to all things else.
Speak to what you love about the Faith. Share your optimism, enthusiasm, how it has affected your own life. This communicates well, if the person is open, in the sense that we naturally become interested by anything others show excitement for. And because you're sharing something, not just relaying information on behalf of a third party.
As a lover of things mystical, I find there is an impossibly wide gulf between our conceptions of God (which are always wrong) and our experience of God (which is always mysterious). From this standpoint, even the word "God" does us a disservice, since it lulls one into feeling we understand what we mean when we say it.
In this respect, atheism is a kind of honesty: rejecting all concepts of the Ocean based merely on second-hand reports, or one day's playing at the seaside. Even the whales have seen only the briefest span of it.
So I applaud you for coming to such a point in your religious studies, but would like to suggest that a new phase exists beyond it: a relationship not based on knowledge or conceptions. Indeed, faith and death of self are needed here, not rhetoric. "Be nothing then, and walk upon the waves." Which may seem like madness in our intellectually-driven culture, but what is there to be found is also, profoundly real.
The compass of the mind
is whatever it can conceive;
but the bound of the heart
is all that it believes.
The farmer looks at his young tomato plant and says, "Perfect! Everything is just as it should be."
He's still going to expect tomatoes come summer.
Also see http://newartisans.com/2018/04/win-for-recursion-schemes/ for more notes on using ADI in this context.
To add to what /u/mewesley wrote: I also think that, since spiritual growth is reflected in and sustained by our service to community, backbiting creates a fundamental contradiction between what we are doing and what we aim to achieve, blocking the seeker's forward progress. Likewise any act that does harm to ourselves, our environment, or the others we meet along that path.
I'm so glad to see people recognizing the value of Eli's contributions. He is one of our mainstays.
If you lost your phone, what would you do there?
It's fascinating even that we're able not to realize it. As kids we might have an imaginary friend and spend hours talking with them, but there comes a time when it has no "life" anymore -- it doesn't do the trick. Yet in adulthood, we've abstracted our hollow companion, and given him the keys to heaven and hell.
How do you get access to Reddit? Do they have Internet-connected terminals in the temple?
The mods here allow it, so I'd recommend blocking ewk.
Say hi! ask about the weather, tell a story. Sometimes Zen has to sneak up on you. It's not the Buddha statue sitting in the courtyard... until it is.
You've written several posts in the last few days, many sounding like: "Do this, don't do this; be this, don't be this."
I see your blade, flashing, swinging. Until it's dinner time, why chop the vegetables?
I'd question the "know" in that sentence...
Elaborate?
Oh yeah, I totally buy that. In fact, we make use of this fact to our advantage so that our limited cognitive abilities can keep up with the sheer volume of information presented by the physical world.
I thought an aspect of Zen was that if you can say it, it’s already incorrect. :)
I'd suggest Nix as a package manager on top of Haskell (which is how I use it), but don't even want to know what your opinion of its command-line interface would be. :)
A tall, strong wave was one day rolling along the sea, and he asked himself, "Should I be calm and serene as I pass my time, or is it OK to splash about once in a while? Which will better help me reach my goal?"
Even when the moon shines its brightest, it's not a sun.
For example, Bahá'ís don't consider `Abdu'l-Bahá to be a Prophet, even though we read His Writings and Prayers as part of the "Creative Word".
As a meta project, I've been working on a category theory library for Coq that is aimed at computability and practical uses for computer scientists:
https://github.com/jwiegley/category-theory
For example, one of the motivations was to use CCCs as a lingua franca for writing compilers from Lambda calculus to any other CCC, such as Conal Elliott is doing for Haskell: https://github.com/conal/concat.
Dismay.
It's hard to build beautiful castles of mist, and then have the wind blow.
We can always use more help with writing tests and reviewing code, since that will have the added benefit of familiarizing you with the source code as well.
I wonder whether it's about "cognition" at all...
It calls to mind a cave full of people, icy cold, who are told all they need to do is step outside, into the sun. Except they don't know the way out, or what the sun is, so they eagerly research what is known about the sun, and start talking about things like gnosis of the sun, etc.
Every once in a while, someone finds their way outside, and that's all she wrote.
He did tell you he was ephemeral. Archetypically so.
Yes, it is.
Funny that the man in the desert, looking for water, never questions his goal or if he's found it.
The kitten catches his tail
panting, out of breath
a perplexing victory
I'm expecting the resulting C code would be fairly readable, next to the Emacs Lisp code, just as it is today when we reimplement a Lisp function into the C Core.
What I saw was my ego being given no place to hide, so I returned the favor. ;)
Ah, the r/Zen method of enlightenment: see everyone else as less so.
It's a great question, but I think presupposes its own conundrum.
My guess is that a lot of people imagine the "end of suffering" implies some sort of continual bliss or contentment, but maybe it's just the end of "suffering" as a qualifier on experience which causes us to reject our present (and only) state.
So it's not that it's preferable not to suffer, but that preference itself is the basis of suffering. Surely there will always be hardship, but it's up to you whether it's seen as terrible, challenging, an opportunity, or at the very least better than death.
I have it installed, but haven’t used it yet. :)
I use Nix and use-package together. One for installing and updating, the other for configuration.
My experience has been good so far. And yes to both reading and writing research papers, and presenting at conferences.
Actually, nowadays I install them all using Nix:
https://github.com/jwiegley/nix-config/blob/master/config/emacs.nix
Does this give a start?
module ComposeAlg where
import Control.Monad
import Control.Monad.Trans.Except
import Control.Monad.Trans.Reader
import Data.Fix
import Data.Functor.Compose
algComp :: Functor f => (f a -> a) -> (f b -> b) -> f (a, b) -> (a, b)
algComp f g x = (f (fmap fst x), g (fmap snd x))
data ExprF a = Cons1 a a | Cons2 a
type Typing m a = ReaderT () (ExceptT () m) a
data Type = Type
typeOf :: ExprF (Typing m Type) -> Typing m Type
typeOf = undefined
identityAlg :: ExprF (ExprF a) -> ExprF a
identityAlg = undefined
result :: Fix ExprF -> Typing m (Fix (Compose ((,) Type) ExprF))
result = cataM $ algComp typeOf identityAlg
Note that result needs a bit more juggling before it will work, but I think your definition of Typing should allow it.
Perhaps this approach will help: http://newartisans.com/2018/04/win-for-recursion-schemes/
I know Eli puts in an enormous amount of time. I put in hardly any, since other projects have consumed my attention. I spend a few hours a week reading through the mailing list, making sure no human fires need to be put out, but other than, Eli Zaretskii is who you should think of as being the current maintainer of Emacs. His efforts are truly herculean.
Many of the other contributors also put in great amounts of time on a regular basis. I'll let them chime in here if they visit Reddit...
I started a new career in Haskell, with no previous experience in functional programming (my background was C++ compilers) when I was age 40. So yes, you can.
Great! I think that constraint was due to an earlier formulation that was later simplified. I’ll make that change.
No Faith is easy to be a part of in its early days. Look at what happened to the companions of Noah. It would have been almost impossible for anyone to stay with Noah. Holding to a Manifestation of God during the time of awakening is always difficult, and historically speaking, most people just don't. The real numbers always come later, when we have grand churches, large communities with established support systems, and commonly agreed upon doctrines.
To me, the community of today is an opportunity to serve, not to be served. I can't expect it to be satisfying, fulfilling, or even easy most of the time. We're scrambling to understand a Revelation that has never been seen before, and its impact on current social systems is bound to be both damaging and confusing, as old structures give ways to patterns of thinking outside our present experience. In a way it's like giving birth: What happens in the operating room is messy, smells awful, and is full of tension and even screaming. It bears very little resemblance to what your experience of that mother and child will be even a few weeks later, much less in the years to come.
I think this question concerns the station of Bahá'u'lláh and the nature of His Revelation. All else is secondary, even irrelevant. If I don't like some of the laws, or if things seems illogical to me, then this is how I'm experiencing the transformative effect of His Teachings:
Know verily that the essence of justice and the source thereof are both embodied in the ordinances prescribed by Him Who is the Manifestation of the Self of God amongst men, if ye be of them that recognize this truth. He doth verily incarnate the highest, the infallible standard of justice unto all creation. Were His law to be such as to strike terror into the hearts of all that are in heaven and on earth, that law is naught but manifest justice. The fears and agitation which the revelation of this law provokes in men's hearts should indeed be likened to the cries of the suckling babe weaned from his mother's milk, if ye be of them that perceive. Were men to discover the motivating purpose of God's Revelation, they would assuredly cast away their fears, and, with hearts filled with gratitude, rejoice with exceeding gladness.
Or my favorite expression of this sentiment, from The Seven Valleys:
When the qualities of the Ancient of Days stood revealed,
Then the qualities of earthly things did Moses burn away.
He who hath attained this station is sanctified from all that pertaineth to the world. Wherefore, if those who have come to the sea of His presence are found to possess none of the limited things of this perishable world, whether it be outer wealth or personal opinions, it mattereth not. For whatever the creatures have is limited by their own limits, and whatever the True One hath is sanctified therefrom; this utterance must be deeply pondered that its purport may be clear.
I've seen some here who stress "contentment and bliss" in Zen, but I have to think it's about being liberated from "content" vs. "not content". When you have no issue with feeling what you feel, and nothing needs to change beyond what the moment calls for, then what's the issue? It's not about constantly riding a happy train; life is what you're in the middle of, right now and always.
The many things are illusion. That which is, simply is, anything we assert of it is wrong by the act.
I don't think the Zen guys say the world is an illusion. If you suggested that to them, I have a feeling you'd get a stick in the face, asking how an illusion just bumped your nose.
What they might say is that the world you think you see is the illusion, and exists as much as your dreams do: that is, having great effect on your emotions and thoughts, but at the end of the night nothing has actually changed.
To use the school analogy: Although you move from one form of instruction to another that builds on the previous, this doesn't mean you don't continue to apply what was learned before. You just do it in the new context, where new rules and problems are at hand.
This is a good insight. My brain is almost entirely faith based at first. I feel like someone who falls into the chair, and then sits as though I totally meant to do that.
Someone here once asked me if I had anything that wasn’t Zen, and I’m still reeling from that one. What is this “having”!
What Zen teaches me: Even if I worry about it, I can’t make worry last.
That was pretty amazing. Off the hook, dump!
The principal activity of Zen is to penetrate through conceptualization and behold the pure mind devoid of all passions, attachments, objects.
This sounds so close to being totally on point and reasonable, but then I step back and find so much in it that assumes I already know what it means:
Penetrate is given as a verb without defining the action to be taken; it assumes a barrier, an actor, a place being penetrated to, but defines none of them.
Behold: another great sounding word that seems like the main action, but adds nothing.
The pure mind is...? Calling it pure doesn’t clarify what is meant by saying mind. Or how it can be devoid; does it otherwise contain things?
Now I’m left with nothing at all, though it still sounds cool. I guess that’s the beauty of conception for you.
A book is just paper and ink, but I have to go beyond that to reach its meaning; still further to grasp the intent; and still further to understand its animating principle. This last thing is wordless, and needed the whole book to bridge the gap between my mind and that of its author.
I feel like some here are saying that Zen is just staring at the paper because that’s what’s palpably in front of you. Though maybe it’s relating to the principle — which cannot be prisoned even by intent — and leaving the book behind once its task is achieved.
https://github.com/jwiegley/hnix is essentially a catamorphic lambda calculus interpreter. Using a functor fixed point to encode expression trees yields some very useful flexibility.
Great questions. Not yet. :)
Yes, let's chat after I get further into the work. I'm still at the reading stage right now. I was thinking of doing it the way poly_constraints, with an initial phase of evaluation that produces a set of typing constraints, and then a second phase of resolution to discover if the set can be properly reduced.
The full language, enough to replace Nix as an evaluator of nixpkgs. Until the hnix-store project becomes stable enough, we'll still be shelling out to nix-store and nix-instantiate.
Note that a person, even while alive and interacting with you, is reckoned in scripture "as one dead" until he has recognized God. This doesn't mean he doesn't exist, or isn't alive, or doesn't have a soul that might move on. But there's life, and then there's life.
Yes, I would recommend this as well.
Funny you should ask, since this weekend I'm going to start writing an HN type checker for hnix, so I've been doing quite a bit of reading.
I found these resources helpful so far:
Great for introduction to concepts, but the implementation was hard to follow: http://steshaw.org/hm/hindley-milner.pdf
A good follow-on read to that paper, clearer algorithm (because of the phase separation): https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8983/233b3dff2c5b94efb31235f62bddc22dc899.pdf
This second paper has a reference implementation in Haskell: https://github.com/kseo/poly_constraints
I would just need for throwError to rely on a MonadThrow constraint. For the time being, using error was fine for my use case.
I just implemented this very thing in hnix a couple of days ago, but found that all I needed was MonadReader:
https://github.com/jwiegley/hnix/blob/master/Nix/Stack.hs#L26
The frogplant.
See http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~mpj/pubs/composing.html, it gives the minimum conditions you're looking for
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